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SECOND ESSAY 



ON THE 



EARL OF CHATHAM 



MACAULAY 



OW 8 cprnp/^Y 



MACAULAY'S SECOND ESSAY 



EARL OF CHATHAM 



WITH NOTES AND A SKETCH OF MACAULAY'S 
LIFE BY D. H M. 



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LLlk 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 

GINN & COMPANY, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



All Rights Reserved. 






LIBRARY 

(\OW C ONGR ESS 
'WASHINGTON 



Typography by J. S. Cushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Ginn & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



LORD MACAULAY, 



Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, 
Leicestershire, England, in 1 800. He was the eldest son of Zach- 
ary Macaulay, the eminent philanthropist whose labors did so much 
toward securing the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies. 

Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge, at eighteen. 
He was " gulfed " in his examination in mathematics, but distin- 
guished himself in literary work. At twenty-six he was admitted 
to the bar ; but law was not his vocation, and meanwhile he had 
made himself famous in London society by his essay on Milton, 
contributed to the Edinburgh Review in 1825. 

Zachary Macaulay had been a man of handsome property ; but 
while his son was in college he met with heavy losses. Instead of 
inheriting something of a fortune as he expected, young Macaulay 
found himself poor. Nothing daunted by the prospect, he set 
manfully to work not only to support himself, but to help lift the 
burden of debt from his father's shoulders. It was a hard strug- 
gle, and at one time he found himself so pinched for means that 
he was obliged to sell his Cambridge gold medals to get money 
enough to buy bread. 

In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament. His speeches gained 
for him as much reputation as his essays. Gladstone, who sat 
with him in the Parliament of 1832, says that when it was known 
that Macaulay was " on his legs " there was a rush, and the empty 
benches of the House were soon filled with eager listeners. 

The brilliant young member for Calne was an ardent Whig, but 
in all things thoroughly independent. He was no politician ; he 
would not, nay, he could not, sell his soul for any mess of pecun- 
iary or popular pottage. Later, when Edinburgh declined to re- 
elect him because he had refused to sacrifice his convictions to 
the excited prejudices of his constituents, he wrote to those who 

hi 



i v LORD MAC AULA Y. 

had turned against him, " I shall always be proud to think that I 
once enjoyed your favor ; but permit me to say, I shall remember 
not less proudly how I risked and how I lost it." 

Undoubtedly this very positiveness of conviction and of assertion 
marked, in one way, a limitation of intellectual power. There were 
no degrees of light and shade in his mental horizon. Lord Mel- 
bourne once humorously hit off this defect by saying, " I wish I 
were as cock-sure of any one thing as Macaulay is of everything." 

Perhaps the writer of the essay on the Earl of Chatham had a 
better right than most men to feel " cock-sure " about what he 
knew. In his range of reading he seemed to grasp the whole of 
what he had read almost at a glance, and he apparently never 
forgot the minutest details of anything he thus stored up in his 
marvellous memory. He was, moreover, an indefatigable worker. 
While he was walking he was also reading ; and the story goes 
that on one stretch of sixteen miles — from Piccadilly, through 
Clapham to Greenwich — he went through with fourteen books of 
the " Odyssey." At the end of such a " constitutional " he prob- 
ably knew nothing of the streets and lanes he had passed through, 
but then only think how intimately he had become acquainted 
with the " much-contriving Ulysses." Out of these encyclopaedic 
stores of knowledge he wrote. It was no more effort for him to 
turn off ten or fifteen pages of an article for the Edinburgh be- 
tween five o'clock in the morning and breakfast — the time when 
he wrote most of his essays — than for a fountain to pour out 
water. Meanwhile he kept himself young by uproarious frolics 
with children. The house in Great Ormond Street was some- 
times filled with his young friends • and when Macaulay, getting 
behind the sofa, would build a den of newspapers, and creeping 
into it would roar like a hungry Bengal tiger, the boys and girls 
fairly shrieked with delight at the performance. 

In 1834 Macaulay received an appointment on the Supreme 
Council of India at a salary of ^"10,000 a year. During his 
residence of nearly three years in that country he did excellent 
service in the direction of law reform and of education. India 
to-day is reaping the harvest which his intelligence sowed. 



LORD MACAU LAY. v 

On his return to England Macaulay again entered Parliament, 
and not long after he became a member of the Cabinet. His 
fame was now established, and no great dinner party in the upper 
circles of London society was complete without the presence of 
this brilliant writer and talker. Before he left England some 
envious people had accused him of talking too much on such 
occasions, but " now," said Sydney Smith, " Macaulay has occa- 
sional flashes of silence which make him perfectly delightful." 

Macaulay never married, but seemed to live for his sisters who 
were very dear to him. In 1841, while residing in lodgings at the 
" Albany," in the west end of London, he began the greatest of his 
works — the " History of England." It was while engaged on this 
that he wrote his second essay on Chatham — his last contribution 
to the Edinburgh Review. From that time until his death, in 1859, 
he labored incessantly on what was to be, after all, not even a half- 
finished embodiment of his purpose ; for his history instead of cov- 
ering a century, or more, barely covers fifteen years. Two years 
before the end came he received a peerage, and became Baron 
Macaulay of Rothley ; but his health had already begun to break, 
and he wrote some time after, " In a week I have grown twenty 
years older." "Sitting with his eyes fixed on death " he went on 
page by page or line by line according to his strength. He died, 
as it were, pen in hand, seated in his arm-chair, surrounded by his 
favorite books. In the southern transept of Westminster Abbey, 
in the "Poet's Corner," one sees at the foot of Addison's statue a 
plain gray slab set in the pavement ; on it this name is cut, fol- 
lowed by this quotation from Handel's noble hymn : 

Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay. 

Born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, 

October 25, 1800. 

Died at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, 

December 28, 1859. 



" His body is buried in peace, 
but his name liveth for evermore.' 



D. H. M. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 1 

[Edinburgh Review, October, 1844.] 

More than ten years ago we commenced a sketch of the political 
life of the great Lord Chatham. 2 We then stopped at the death 
of George the Second, with the intention of speedily resuming 
our task. Circumstances, which it would be tedious to explain, 
long prevented us from carrying this intention into effect. Nor 
can we regret the delay. For the materials which were within 
our reach in 1834 were scanty and unsatisfactory, when compared 
with those which we at present possess. Even now, though we 
have had access to some valuable sources of information which 

[The notes are confined to those points on which information cannot be readily 
obtained by the student from ordinary books of reference. — D. H. M.] 

1 1. " Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham." 4 vols. 8vo. Lon- 
don : 1840. 

2. " Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Horace Mann." 4 vols. 8vo. 
London : 1843-4. 

2 William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham, was born in 1708 ; died 1778. He was 
educated at Oxford, bat his health compelled him to leave the university without 
taking a degree. 

In 1736 he entered the House of Commons as a representative of Old Sarum, 
a borough which his father, a former governor of Madras, had purchased a num : 
ber of years before his death. 

In an age of unparalleled political corruption, Pitt was proof against all tempta- 
tions. He never took and he never gave a bribe. 

In 1756 he became prime minister for a short time, but he was the real directing 
power long after he was dismissed from the premiership by George II., who hated 
him, but found that he could not do without him. Through the energy of the 
" Great Commoner," as the people liked to call him, England won the prize of 
America in the war with France (1756-1763). 

It is at this point, which Macaulay well calls the zenith of Pitt's glory, that the pres- 
ent essay begins. His biographer speaks of him as " the idol of England " and " the 
terror of France " ; he might justly have added " the best friend of America " — the 
man who fought in Parliament for the rights of the colonists, and who dared to say 
when they rose against royal oppression, " 2 rejoice that America has resisted!' 



2 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

have not yet been opened to the public, we cannot but feel that 
the history of the first ten years of the reign of George the Third 
is but imperfectly known to us. Nevertheless, we are inclined 
to think that we are in a condition to lay before our readers a 
narrative neither uninstructive nor uninteresting. We therefore 
turn with pleasure to our long interrupted labor. 

We left Pitt in the zenith of prosperity and glory, the idol of 
England, the terror of France, the admiration of the whole 
civilized world. The wind, from whatever quarter it blew, carried 
to England tidings of battles won, fortresses taken, provinces 
added to the empire. At home, factions had sunk into a lethargy, 
such as had never been known since the great religious schism 
of the sixteenth century had roused the public mind from repose. 

In order that the events which we have to relate may be clearly 
understood, it may be desirable that we should advert to the 
causes which had for a time suspended the animation of both 
the great English parties. 

If, rejecting all that is merely accidental, we look at the 
essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may con- 
sider each of them as the representative of a great principle, 
essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, 
the guardian of liberty, and the other, of order. One is the 
moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. 
One is the sail, without which society would make no progress, 
the other the ballast without which there would be small safety in 
a tempest. But, during the forty-six years which followed the 
accession of the House of Hanover, 1 these distinctive peculiarities 
seemed to be effaced. The Whig conceived that he could not 
better serve the cause of civil and religious freedom than by 
strenuously supporting the Protestant dynasty. The Tory con- 
ceived that he could not better prove his hatred of revolutions 
than by attacking a government to which a revolution had given 
birth. Both came by degrees to attach more importance to the 
means than to the end. Both were thrown into unnatural situa- 

1 The House of Hanover began with George I. of Brunswick, Elector of Han- 
over, in 1714. It is still the reigning House in England. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 3 

tions ; and both, like animals transported to an uncongenial 
climate, languished and degenerated. The Tory, removed from 
the sunshine of the court, was as a camel in the snows of Lapland. 
The Whig, basking in the rays of royal favor, was as a reindeer in 
the sands of Arabia. 

Dante tells us that he saw, in Malebolge, 1 a strange encounter 
between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel 
wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great 
cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis 
began. Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its 
antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs ; the 
man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the 
serpent put forth arms ; the arms of the man shrank into his body. 
At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake ; the man sank 
down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this 
was the transformation which, during the reign of George the 
First, befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the 
shape and color of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect, 
the zealot of freedom, and the Whig crawled and licked the dust 
at the feet of power. 

It is true that, when these degenerate politicians discussed 
questions merely speculative, and above all, when they discussed 
questions relating to the conduct of their own grandfathers, they 
still seemed to differ as their grandfathers had differed. The 
Whig, who, during three parliaments, had never given one vote 
against the court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the Comp- 
troller's staff or for the Great Wardrobe, 2 still professed to draw 
his political doctrines from Locke and Milton, still worshipped the 
memory of Pym and Hampden, and would still, on the thirtieth 
of January, 3 take his glass, first to the man in the mask, and then 
to the man who would do it without a mask. The Tory, on the 

1 Malebolge : the eighth circle of Dante's Hell. 

2 The Great Wardrobe : i.e., the office to which pertains the care of the royal 
wardrobe. 

3 The thirtieth of January : Charles I. was beheaded January 30, 1649. The 
executioner wore a mask, in order that he might not be identified by those who 



4 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

other hand, while he reviled the mild and temperate Walpole as a 
deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing to reprobate in the 
iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud. But, whatever judgment the 
Whig or the Tory of that age might pronounce on transactions 
long past, there can be no doubt that, as respected the practical 
questions then pending, the Tory was a reformer, and indeed an 
intemperate and indiscreet reformer, while the Whig was conserv- 
ative even to bigotry. We have ourselves seen similar effects pro- 
duced in a neighboring country by similar causes. Who would 
have believed, fifteen years ago, that M. Guizot and M. Villemain 
would have to defend property and social order against the attacks 
of such enemies as M. Genoude and M. de La Rochejaquelein ? 

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned dema- 
gogues ; the successors of the old Roundheads had turned cour- 
tiers. Yet was it long before their mutual animosity began to 
abate ; for it is the nature of parties to retain their original 
enmities far more firmly than their original principles. During 
many years, a generation of Whigs whom Sydney would have 
spurned as slaves, continued to wage deadly war with a generation 
of Tories whom Jeffreys would have hanged for republicans. 

Through the whole reign of George the First, and through 
nearly half the reign of George the Second, a Tory was regarded 
as an enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the 
favors of the crown. Though most of the country gentlemen 
were Tories, none but Whigs were created peers and baronets. 
Though most of the clergy were Tories, none but Whigs were 
appointed deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and well- 
descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out 
of the commission of the peace, while men of small estate and 
mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parlia- 
ments and standing armies, presided at quarter sessions, and 
became deputy lieutenants. 

By degrees some approaches were made towards a reconcilia- 

witnessed the execution. It was customary at one time for the Whigs to drink to 
the memory of the "man in the mask" on the anniversary of the day when he 
beheaded the king. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 5 

tion. While Walpole was at the head of affairs, enmity to his 
power induced a large and powerful body of Whigs, headed by 
the heir apparent of the throne, to make an alliance with the 
Tories, and a truce even with the Jacobites. After Sir Robert's 
fall, the ban which lay on the Tory party was taken off. The chief 
places in the administration continued to be filled by Whigs, and, 
indeed, could scarcely have been filled otherwise ; for the Tory 
nobility and gentry, though strong in numbers and in property, had 
among them scarcely a single man distinguished by talents, either 
for business or for debate. A few of them, however, were admitted 
to subordinate offices ; and this indulgence produced a softening 
effect upon the temper of the whole body. The first levee of 
George the Second after Walpole's resignation was a remarkable 
spectacle. Mingled with the constant supporters of the House of 
Brunswick, with the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Pelhams, 
appeared a crowd of faces utterly unknown to the pages and 
gentlemen ushers, lords of rural manors, whose ale and fox-hounds 
were renowned in the neighborhood of the Mendip hills, or round 
the Wrekin, 1 but who had never crossed the threshold of the 
palace since the days when Oxford, with the white staff 2 in his 
hand, stood behind Queen Anne. 

During the eighteen years' which followed this day, both fac- 
tions were gradually sinking deeper and deeper into repose. The 
apathy of the public mind is partly to be ascribed to the unjust 
violence with which the administration of Walpole had been 
assailed. In the body politic, as in the natural body, morbid 
languor generally succeeds morbid excitement. The people had 
been maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by rhetoric, by stimu- 
lants applied to the national pride. In the fulness of bread, they 
had raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying 
such a measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great 
society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a 
Brutus to stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this 
frame of mind when the change of administration took place ; and 

1 The Wrekin : a solitary and very conspicuous hill in Shropshire, England. 

2 The white staff : the badge of office of the lord treasurer. 



6 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

they soon found that there was to be no change whatever in the 
system of government. The natural consequences followed. To 
frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference. The cant of patriotism 
had not merely ceased to charm the public ear, but had become 
as nauseous as the cant of Puritanism after the downfall of the 
Rump. The hot fit was over ; the cold fit had begun ; and it was 
long before seditious arts, or even real grievances, could bring 
back the fiery paroxysm which had run its course and reached its 
termination. 

Two attempts were made to disturb this tranquillity. The 
banished heir 1 of the House of Stuart headed a rebellion ; the dis- 
contented heir of the House of Brunswick headed an opposition. 
Both the rebellion and the opposition came to nothing. The 
battle of Culloden annihilated the Jacobite party. The death of 
Prince Frederic 2 dissolved the faction which, under his guidance, 
had feebly striven to annoy his father's government. His chief 
followers hastened to make their peace with the ministry ; and the 
political torpor became complete. 

Five years after the death of Prince Frederic, the public mind 
was for a time violently excited. But this excitement had nothing 
to do with the old disputes between Whigs and Tories. England 
was at war with France. The war had been feebly conducted. 
Minorca had been torn from us. Our fleet had retired before the 
white flag of the House of Bourbon. A bitter sense of humili- 
ation, new to the proudest and bravest of nations, superseded 
every other feeling. The cry of all the counties and great towns 
of the realm was for a government which would retrieve the honor 
of the English arms. The two most powerful men in the country 

1 Banished heir : Prince Charles Edward Stuart, see note 2, p. 13. 

2 Prince Frederic: Frederic, Prince of Wales; he was the son of George II. 
and father of George III. His father hated him, and George III. never mentioned 
him. A contemporary epitaph sums up the feeling of the opposition party, in 
regard to him, in the following words : — 

" Here lies Fred, 
Who was alive, and is dead. 
* * * * . * * 
There's no more to be said." 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 7 

were the Duke of Newcastle and Pitt. Alternate victories and 
defeats had made them sensible that neither of them could stand 
alone. The interest of the state, and the interest of their own 
ambition, impelled them to coalesce. By their coalition was 
formed the ministry which was in power when George the Third 
ascended the throne. 

The more carefully the structure of this celebrated ministry is 
examined, the more shall we see reason to marvel at the skill or 
the luck which had combined in one harmonious whole such vari- 
ous and, as it seemed, incompatible elements of force. The 
influence which is derived from stainless integrity, the influence 
which is derived from the vilest arts of corruption, the strength of 
aristocratical connection, the strength of democratical enthusiasm, 
all these things were for the first time found together. Newcastle 
brought to the coalition a vast mass of power, which had descended 
to him from Walpole and Pelham. The public offices, the church, 
the courts of law, the army, the navy, the diplomatic service, 
swarmed with his creatures. The boroughs, 1 which long after- 
wards made up the memorable schedules A and B, were repre- 
sented by his nominees. The great Whig families, which, during 
several generations, had been trained in the discipline of party 
warfare, and were accustomed to stand together in a firm phalanx, 
acknowledged him as their captain. Pitt, on the other hand, had 
what Newcastle wanted, an eloquence which stirred the passions 
and charmed the imagination, a high reputation for purity, and 
the confidence and ardent love of millions. 

The partition which the two ministers made of the powers of gov- 
ernment was singularly happy. Each occupied a province for 
which he was well qualified ; and neither had any inclination to 
intrude himself into the province of the other. Newcastle took 
the treasury, the civil and ecclesiastical patronage, and the dis- 
posal of that part of the secret service money which was then 
employed in bribing members of Parliament. Pitt was Secretary 

1 Boroughs : the boroughs or towns here referred to were probably those so 
called " rotten boroughs," which continued to be represented in Parliament when 
they had scarce any inhabitants, and in one instance (Old Sarum) none whatever. 



8 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

of State, with the direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Thus 
the filth of all the noisome and pestilential sewers of government 
was poured into one channel. Through the other passed only 
what was bright and stainless. Mean and selfish politicians, pining 
for commissionerships, gold sticks and ribands, flocked to the 
great" house at the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields. There, at 
every levee, appeared eighteen or twenty pair of lawn sleeves ; for 
there was not, it was said, a single Prelate who had not owed 
either his first elevation or some subsequent translation to New- 
castle. There appeared those members of the House of Com- 
mons in whose silent votes the main strength of the government 
lay. One wanted a place in the excise for his butler. Another 
came about a prebend for his son. A third whispered that he 
had always stood by his Grace and the Protestant succession 1 ; 
that his last election had been very expensive ; that potwallopers 
had now no conscience ; that he had been forced to take up 
money on mortgage ; and that he hardly knew where to turn for 
five hundred pounds. The Duke pressed all their hands, passed 
his arms round all their shoulders, patted all their backs, and sent 
away some with wages, and some with promises. From this 
traffic Pitt stood haughtily aloof. Not only was he himself incor- 
ruptible, but he shrank from the loathsome drudgery of corrupting 
others. He had not, however, been twenty years in Parliament, 
and ten in office, without discovering how the government was 
carried on. He was perfectly aware that bribery was practised 
on a large scale by his colleagues. Hating the practice, yet 
despairing of putting it down, and doubting whether, in those 
times, any ministry could stand without it, he determined to be 
blind to it. He would see nothing, know nothing, believe noth- 
ing. People who came to talk to him about shares in lucra- 
tive contracts, or about the means of securing a Cornish corpora- 
tion, 2 were soon put out of countenance by his arrogant humility. 

1 Protestant succession: see note 2, Act of Settlement, p. 15. 

2 Cornish corporation: i.e., the votes of a Cornish borough or town having 
representatives in Parliament. Before the Reform Act of 1832 many small villages 
or " corporations " in Cornwall sent members to Parliament. These corporations 
were often willing to sell their votes to the candidate who could bid highest. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 9 

They did him too much honor. Such matters were beyond his 
capacity. It was true that his poor advice about expeditions and 
treaties was listened to with indulgence by a gracious sovereign. 
If the question were, who should command in North America, or 
who should be ambassador at Berlin, his colleagues would prob- 
ably condescend to take his opinion. But he had not the smallest 
influence with the Secretary of the Treasury, and could not ven- 
ture to ask even for a tide-waiter's place. 

It may be doubted whether he did not owe as much of his 
popularity to his ostentatious purity as to his eloquence, or to his 
talents for the administration of war. It was everywhere said 
with delight and admiration that the great Commoner, without 
any advantages of birth or fortune, had, in spite of the dislike of 
the court and of the aristocracy, made himself the first man in 
England, and made England the first country in the world ; that 
his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon 
to Moscow ; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the 
globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or 
riband, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should 
retire, after saving the state, he must sell his coach-horses and his 
silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had spread, 
his hands were clean. They had never received, they had never 
given, the price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to itself 
support from all the high and all the low parts of human nature, 
and was strong with the whole united strength of virtue and of 
Mammon. 

Pitt and Newcastle were co-ordinate chief ministers. The sub- 
ordinate places had been filled on the principle of including in the 
government every party and shade of party, the avowed Jacobites 
alone excepted, nay, every public man who, from his abilities or 
from his situation, seemed likely to be either useful in office or 
formidable in opposition. 

The W T higs, according to what was then considered as their 
prescriptive right, held by far the largest share of power. The 
main support of the administration was what may be called the 
great Whig connection, a connection which, during near half a 



10 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

century, had generally had the chief sway in the country, and 
which derived an immense authority from rank, wealth, borough 
interest, and firm union. To this connection, of which Newcastle 
was the head, belonged the houses of Cavendish, Lennox, Fitz- 
roy, Bentinck, Manners, Conway, Wentworth, and many others of 
high note. 

There were two other powerful Whig connections, either of 
which might have been a nucleus for a strong opposition. But 
room had been found in the government for both. They were 
known as the Grenvilles and the Bedfords. 

The head of the Grenvilles was Richard, Earl Temple. His 
talents for administration and debate were of no high order. But 
his great possessions, his turbulent and unscrupulous character, his 
restless activity, and his skill in the most ignoble tactics of faction, 
made him one of the most formidable enemies that a ministry 
could have. He was keeper of the privy seal. His brother 
George was treasurer of the navy. They were supposed to be on 
terms of close friendship with Pitt, who had married their sister, 
and was the most uxorious of husbands. 

The Bedfords, or, as they were called by their enemies, the 
" Bloomsbury gang," 1 professed to be led by John, Duke of Bed- 
ford, but in truth led him wherever they chose, and very often led 
him where he never would have gone of his own accord. He had 
many good qualities of head and heart, and would have been cer- 
tainly a respectable and possibly a distinguished man, if he had 
been less under the influence of his friends, or more fortunate in 
choosing them. Some of them were indeed, to do them justice, 
men of parts. But here, we are afraid, eulogy must end. Sand- 
wich and Rigby were able debaters, pleasant boon companions, 
dexterous intriguers, masters of all the arts of jobbing and elec- 
tioneering, and both in public and private life, shamelessly im- 
moral. Weymouth had a natural eloquence, which sometimes 
astonished those who knew how little he owed to study. But he 
was indolent and dissolute, and had early impaired a fine estate 

1 " Bloomsbury gang": the Bedford family formerly had a town-house in 
Bloomsbury Square, London. 



THE EARL OE CHATHAM. 11 

with the dice box, and a fine constitution with the bottle. The 
wealth and power of the Duke, and the talents and audacity of 
some of his retainers, might have seriously annoyed the strongest 
ministry. But his assistance had been secured. He was Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland ; Rigby was his secretary ; and the whole 
party dutifully supported the measures of the Government. 

Two men had, a short time before, been thought likely to con- 
test with Pitt the lead of the House of Commons, William Murray 
and Henry Fox. But Murray had been removed to the Lords, 
and was Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Fox was indeed still 
in the Commons : but means had been found to secure, if not his 
strenuous support, at least his silent acquiescence. He was a poor 
man ; he was a doting father. The office of Paymaster-General 
during an expensive war was, in that age, perhaps the most lucra- 
tive situation in the gift of the government. This office was 
bestowed on Fox. The prospect of making a noble fortune in 
a few years, and of providing amply for his darling boy Charles, 
was irresistibly tempting. To hold a subordinate place, however 
profitable, after having led the House of Commons, and having 
been intrusted with the business of forming a ministry, was indeed 
a great descent. But a punctilious sense of personal dignity was 
no part of the character of Henry Fox. 

We have not time to enumerate all the other men of weight 
who were, by some tie or other, attached to the government. 
We may mention Hardwicke, reputed the first lawyer of the age ; 
Legge, reputed the first financier of the age ; the acute and ready 
Oswald • the bold and humorous Nugent ; Charles Townshend, 
the most brilliant and versatile of mankind; Elliot, Barrington, 
North, Pratt. Indeed, as far as we can recollect, there were in 
the whole House of Commons only two men of distinguished 
abilities who were not connected with the government ; and those 
two men stood so low in public estimation, that the only service 
which they could have rendered to any government would have 
been to oppose it. We speak of Lord George Sackville and Bubb 
Dodington. 

Though most of the official men, and all the members of the 



12 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

cabinet, were reputed Whigs, the Tories were by no means ex-, 
eluded from employment. Pitt had gratified many of them with 
commands in the militia, which increased both their income and 
their importance in their own counties ; and they were therefore 
in better humor than at any time since the death of Anne. Some 
of the party still continued to grumble over their punch at the 
Cocoa Tree ; but in the House of Commons not a single one of 
the malcontents durst lift his eyes above the buckle of Pitt's shoe. 

Thus there was absolutely no opposition. Nay, there was no 
sign from which it could be guessed from what quarter opposition 
was likely to arise. Several years passed during which Parliament 
seemed to have abdicated its chief functions. The Journals of 
the House of Commons, during four sessions, contain no trace of 
a division on a party question. The supplies, though beyond 
precedent great, were voted without discussion. The most ani- 
mated debates of that period were on road bills and inclosure 
bills. 1 

The old King was content ; and it mattered little whether he 
was content or not. It would have been impossible for him to 
emancipate himself from a ministry so powerful, even if he had 
been inclined to do so. But he had no such inclination. He 
had once, indeed, been strongly prejudiced against Pitt, and had 
repeatedly been ill used by Newcastle ; but the vigor and success 
with which the war had been waged in Germany, and the smooth- 
ness with which all public business was carried on, had produced 
a favorable change in the royal mind. 

Such was the posture of affairs when, on the twenty-fifth of 
October, 1760, George the Second suddenly died, and George 
the Third, then twenty-two years old, became King. The situ- 
ation of George the Third differed widely from that of his grand- 
father and that of his great-grandfather. Many years had elapsed 
since a sovereign of England had been an object of affection to 
any of his people. The first two kings of the House of Hanover 

1 Inclosure bills : bills for enclosing waste or common land ; by means of such 
bills thousands of acres were obtained by influential men, much to the injury of the 
peasantry who were thus wrongfully cut off from using such land. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 13 

had neither those hereditary rights which have often supplied the 
defect of merit, nor those personal qualities which have often 
supplied the defect of title. A prince may be popular with little 
virtue or capacity, if he reigns by birthright derived from a long 
line of illustrious predecessors. An usurper may be popular, if 
his genius has saved or aggrandized the nation which he governs. 
Perhaps no rulers have in our time had a stronger hold on the 
affection of subjects than the Emperor Francis, and his son-in- 
law the Emperor Napoleon. But imagine a ruler with no better 
title than Napoleon, and no better understanding than Francis. 
Richard Cromwell was such a ruler ; and, as soon as an arm was 
lifted up against him, he fell without a struggle, amidst universal 
derision. George the First and George the Second were in a sit- 
uation which bore some resemblance to that of Richard Cromwell. 
They were saved from the fate of Richard Cromwell by the stren- 
uous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the general 
conviction that the nation had no choice but between the House 
of Brunswick and popery. But by no class were the Guelphs 1 
regarded with that devoted affection, of which Charles the First, 
Charles the Second, and James the Second, in spite of the greatest 
faults, and in the midst of the greatest misfortunes, received 
innumerable proofs. Those Whigs who stood by the new dynasty 
so manfully with purse and sword did so on principles independent 
of, and indeed almost incompatible with, the sentiment of devoted 
loyalty. The moderate Tories regarded the foreign dynasty as 
a great evil, which must be endured for fear of a greater evil. In 
the eyes of the high Tories, the Elector was the most hateful of 
robbers and tyrants. The crown of another was on his head ; the 
blood of the brave and loyal was on his hands. Thus, during 
many years, the kings of England were objects of strong personal 
aversion to many of their subjects, and of strong personal attach- 
ment to none. They found, indeed, firm and cordial support 
against the Pretender 2 to their throne ; but this support was given, 

1 Guelphs : another name for the House of Brunswick or Hanover. 

2 Pretender to their throne : alluding to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, 
grandson of James II. By the bloodless Revolution of 1688 James was driven 



14 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

not at all for their sake, but for the sake of a religious and political 
system which would have been endangered by their fall. This 
support, too, they were compelled to purchase by perpetually 
sacrificing their private inclinations to the party which had set 
them on the throne, and which maintained them there. 

At the close of the reign of George the Second, the feeling of 
aversion with which the House of Brunswick had long been 
regarded by half the nation had died away; but no feeling of 
affection to that house had yet sprung up. There was little, 
indeed, in the old King's character to inspire esteem or tenderness. 
He was not our countryman. He never set foot on our soil till he 
was more than thirty years old. His speech bewrayed his foreign 
origin and breeding. His love for his native land, though the 
most amiable part of his character, was not likely to endear him 
to his British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could 
exchange St. James's 1 for Herrenhausen. 2 Year after year, our 
fleets were employed to convey him to the Continent, and the 
interests of his kingdom were as nothing to him when compared 
with the interests of his Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither 
the qualities which make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which 
make libertinism attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse 
father, an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one 
magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him ; but many 
instances of meanness, and of a harshness, which, but for the 
strong constitutional restraints under which he was placed, might 
have made the misery of his people. 3 

He died ; and at once a new world opened. The young King 

from the English throne, and was succeeded by William and Mary, who were 
followed by Anne and the Brunswicks. The Pretender made a desperate attempt 
to obtain the crown of England, but was hopelessly defeated in the reign of George 
II. at the battle of Culloden, Scotland, in 1746. An earlier rising was defeated in 

I7I5- 

1 St. James's : the royal palace in St. James Park, London. 

2 Herrenhausen: the ancestral palace of the Georges, near the city of Hanover, 
Germany. 

3 George II. deserves, however, praise for his personal bravery. He was the 
last English king who led the English forces ; and at the battle of Dettingen, in 1743, 
he showed himself every inch a soldier. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 15 

was a born Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good or bad, 
were English. No portion of his subjects had anything to reproach 
him with. Even the remaining adherents of the House of Stuart 
could scarcely impute to him the guilt of usurpation. He was 
not responsible for the Revolution, 1 for the Act of Settlement, 2 for 
the suppression of the risings of 1715 and of 1745. 3 He was 
innocent of the blood of Derwentwater and Kilmarnock, of Bal- 
merino and Cameron. 4 Born fifty years after the old line had been 
expelled, fourth in descent and third in succession of the Han- 
overian dynasty, he might plead some show of hereditary right. 
His age, his appearance, and all that was known of his character, 
conciliated public favor. He was in the bloom of youth ; his 
person and address were pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no 
vice ; and flattery might, without any glaring absurdity, ascribe to 
him many princely virtues. 

It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of loyalty, a senti- 
ment which had lately seemed to be as much out of date as the 
belief in witches or the practice of pilgrimage, should, from the 
day of his accession, have begun to revive. The Tories in particu- 
lar, who had always been inclined to King-worship, and who had 
long felt with pain the want of an idol before whom they could 
bow themselves down, were as joyful as the priests of Apis, when, 
after a long interval, they had found a new calf to adore. It was 
soon clear that George the Third was regarded by a portion of the 
nation with a very different feeling from that which his two pre- 
decessors had inspired. They had been merely First Magistrates, 
Doges, Stadtholders ; he was emphatically a King, the anointed of 
heaven, the breath of his people's nostrils. The years of the 
widowhood and mourning of the Tory party were over. Dido had 
kept faith long enough to the cold ashes of a former lord ; she had 
at last found a comforter, and recognized the vestiges of the old 



1 Bevolution : the Revolution of 1688 (see note 2, p. 13) . 

2 Act of Settlement : this was the act [1700] which secured the English crown 
to the House of Brunswick, " being Protestants." 

3 Risings in favor of the " Pretender" representing the House of Stuart. 

4 Derwentwater and the rest were executed for aiding the " Pretender." 



16 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

flame. The golden days of Harley would return. The Somersets, 
the Lees, and the Wyndhams would again surround the throne. 
The latitudinarian Prelates, who had not been ashamed to corre- 
spond with Doddridge and to shake hands with Whiston, would be 
succeeded by divines of the temper of South and Atterbury. The 
devotion 1 which had been so signally shown to the House of Stuart, 
which had been proof against defeats, confiscations, and proscrip- 
tions, which perfidy, oppression, ingratitude, could not weary out, 
was now transferred entire to the House of Brunswick. If George 
the Third would but accept the homage of the Cavaliers and High 
Churchmen, he should be to them all that Charles the First and 
Charles the Second had been. 

The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a great party 
long estranged from his house, had received from nature a strong 
will, a firmness of temper to which a harsher name might perhaps 
be given, and an understanding not, indeed, acute or enlarged, 
but such as qualified him to be a good man. of business. But his 
character had not yet fully developed itself. He had been 
brought up in strict seclusion. The detractors of the Princess 
Dowager of Wales affirmed that she had kept her children from 
commerce with society, in order that she might hold an undivided 
empire over their minds. She gave a very different explanation 
of her conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and 
daughters mix in the world, if they could do so without risk to 
their morals. But the profligacy of the people of quality alarmed 
her. The young men were all rakes; the young women made 
love, instead of waiting till it was made to them. She could not 
bear to expose those whom she loved best to the contaminating 
influence of such society. The moral advantages of the system of 
education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumber- 
land, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. 
George the Third was indeed no libertine ; but he brought to the 

1 Devotion : on the entire devotion of the Jacobites to the falling House of 
Stuart, see Macaulay's fine poem, " Epitaph on a Jacobite," beginning : — 

" To the King I offered free from stain 
Courage and faith; vain faith, and courage vain." 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 17 

throne a mind only half opened, and was for some time entirely 
under the influence of his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, 
John Stuart, Earl of Bute. 

The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, to the 
country which he was soon to govern. He had indeed, a short 
time after he came of age, been chosen to fill a vacancy, which, in 
the middle of a parliament, had taken place among the Scotch 
representative peers. He had disobliged the Whig ministers by 
giving some silent votes with the Tories, had consequently lost his 
seat at the next dissolution, and had never been reelected. Near 
twenty years had elapsed since he had borne any part in politics. 
He had passed some of those years at his seat in one of the 
Hebrides, and from that retirement he had emerged as one of the 
household of Prince Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public 
life, had found out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a 
tolerable actor in private theatricals, and was particularly successful 
in the part of Lothario. A handsome leg, to which both painters 
and satirists took care to give prominence, was among his chief 
qualifications for the stage. He devised quaint dresses for mas- 
querades. He dabbled in geometry, mechanics, and botany. He 
paid some attention to antiquities and works of art, and was con- 
sidered in his own circle as a judge of painting, architecture, and 
poetry. It is said that his spelling was incorrect. But though, in 
our time, incorrect spelling is justly considered as a proof of sordid 
ignorance, it would be unjust to apply the same rule to people who 
lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles Grandison was pub- 
lished about the time at which Lord Bute made his appearance 
at Leicester House. Our readers may perhaps remember the 
account which Charlotte Grandison gives of her two lovers. One 
of them, a fashionable baronet who talks French and Italian 
fluently, cannot write a line in his own language without some sin 
against orthography ; the other, who is represented as a most 
respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, and something of a 
virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for a lord. On the 
whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of cultivated 
mind. He was also a man of undoubted honor. But his under- 



18 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

standing was narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His 
qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by 
Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering 
at his dependents. " Bute," said his Royal Highness, " you are 
the very man to be envoy at some small proud German court 
where there is nothing to do." 

Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the favored 
lover of the Princess Dowager. He was undoubtedly her con- 
fidential friend. The influence which the two united exercised 
over the mind of the King was for a time unbounded. The 
Princess, a woman and a foreigner, was not likely to be a judicious 
adviser about affairs of state. The Earl could scarcely be said to 
have served even a novitiate in politics. His notions of govern- 
ment had been acquired in the society which had been in the 
habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and Leicester House. 
That society consisted principally of Tories, who had been 
reconciled to the House of Hanover by the civility with which 
the Prince had treated them, and by the hope of obtaining high 
preferment when he should come to the throne. Their political 
creed was a peculiar modification of Toryism. It was the creed 
neither of the Tories of the seventeenth nor of the Tories of the 
nineteenth century. It was the creed, not of Filmer and Sach- 
everell, not of Perceval and Eldon, but of the sect of which 
Bolingbroke may be considered as the chief doctor. This sect 
deserves commendation for having pointed out and justly repro- 
bated some great abuses which sprang up during the long 
domination of the Whigs. But it is far easier to point out and 
reprobate abuses than to propose beneficial reforms : and the 
reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would either have been 
utterly inefficient or would have produced much more mischief 
than they would have removed. 

The Revolution had saved the nation from one class of evils, 
but had at the same time — such is the imperfection of all things 
human — engendered or aggravated another class of evils which 
required new remedies. Liberty and property were secure from 
the attacks of prerogative. Conscience was respected. No 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 19 

government ventured to infringe any of the rights solemnly 
recognized by the instrument which had called William and 
Mary to the throne. But it cannot be denied that, under the 
new system, the public interests and the public morals were 
seriously endangered by corruption and faction. During the 
long struggle against the Stuarts, the chief object of the most 
enlightened statesmen had been to strengthen the House of 
Commons. The struggle was over; the victory was won; the 
House of Commons was supreme in the state ; and all the vices 
which had till then been latent in the representative system were 
rapidly developed by prosperity and power. Scarcely had the 
executive government become really responsible to the House 
of Commons, when it began to appear that the House of Com- 
mons was not really responsible to the nation. Many of the 
constituent bodies were under the absolute control of individuals ; 
many were notoriously at the command of the highest bidder. 
The debates were not published. It was very seldom known out 
of doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry 
was accountable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament 
was accountable to nobody. In such circumstances, nothing 
could be more natural than that the members should insist on 
being paid for their votes, should form themselves into combina- 
tions for the purpose of raising the price of their votes, and should 
at critical conjunctures extort large wages by threatening a strike. 
Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George the 
Second were compelled to reduce corruption to a system, and to 
practise it on a gigantic scale. 

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely 
be wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to de- 
prive the House of Commons of its weight in the state. Such a 
course would undoubtedly have put an end to parliamentary cor- 
ruption and to parliamentary factions ; for, when votes cease to 
be of importance, they will cease to be bought ; and^ when knaves 
can get nothing by combining, they will cease to combine. But 
to destroy corruption and faction by introducing despotism would 
have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy evidently 



20 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation ; 
and this was to be effected in two ways ; first, by giving publicity 
to parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on 
his trial before the tribunal of public opinion ; and secondly, by 
so reforming the constitution of the House that no man should be 
able to sit in it who had not been returned by a respectable and 
independent body of constituents. 

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very 
different mode of treating the diseases of the state. Their doc- 
trine was that a vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot King 
would at once break all factious combinations, and supersede the 
pretended necessity of bribing members of Parliament. The 
King had only to resolve that he would be master, that he would 
not be held in thraldom by any set of men, that he would take for 
ministers any persons in whom he had confidence, without distinc- 
tion of party, and that he would restrain his servants from influ- 
encing by immoral means either the constituent bodies or the 
representative body. This childish scheme proved that those 
who proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with 
which they pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence 
of corruption and faction was that a House of Commons, not 
accountable to the people, was more powerful than the King. 
Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only by a King more 
powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot 
Prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent 
he could not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an 
embassy, or defray even the charges of his own household ? Was 
he to dissolve the Parliament ? And what was he likely to gain by 
appealing to Sudbury and Old Sarum against the venality of their 
representatives ? Was he to send out privy seals ? Was he to levy 
ship-money? 1 If so, this boasted reform must commence in all 
probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must be consummated 
by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the patriot 
King to carry the House of Commons with him in his upright 

1 Privy seals and ship-money : an allusion to the forced loans and illegal 
taxes extorted by Charles I. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 21 

designs ? By what means ? Interdicting himself from the use of 
corrupt influence, what motive was he to address to the Doding- 
tons and Winningtons ? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit, to 
be laid asleep by a few fine sentences about virtue and union ? 

Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, particularly 
among men of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice ; 
and the result was, as any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the 
most piteous and ridiculous of failures. 

On the very day of the young King's accession, appeared some 
signs which indicated the approach of a great change. The 
speech which he made to his council was not submitted to the 
cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute, and contained some expres- 
sions which might be construed into reflections on the conduct of 
affairs during the late reign. Pitt remonstrated, and begged that 
these expressions might be softened down in the printed copy ; 
but it was not till after some hours of altercation that Bute yielded ; 
and, even after Bute had yielded, the King affected to hold out 
till the following afternoon. On the same day on which this sin- 
gular contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the privy 
council, but introduced into the cabinet. 

Soon after this, Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secretaries of 
State, in pursuance of a plan concerted with the court, resigned 
the seals. Bute was instantly appointed to the vacant place. A 
general election speedily followed, and the new Secretary entered 
Parliament in the only way in which he then could enter it, as one 
of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland. 1 

Had the ministers been firmly united it can scarcely be doubted 
that they would have been able to withstand the court. The par- 
liamentary influence of the Whig aristocracy, combined with the 
genius, the virtue, and the fame of Pitt, would have been irresis- 
tible. But there had been in the cabinet of George the Second 
latent jealousies and enmities, which now began . to show them- 
selves. Pitt had been estranged from his old ally Legge, the 

1 In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that, under the 23d 
article of Union, no Scotch peer could be created a peer of Great Britain. This 
resolution was not annulled till the year 1782. 



22 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the ministers were envi- 
ous of Pitt's popularity. Others were, not altogether without 
cause, disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanor. Others, 
again, were honestly opposed to some parts of his policy. They 
admitted that he had found the country in the depths of humili- 
ation, and had raised it to the height of glory ; they admitted that 
he had conducted the war with energy, ability, and splendid suc- 
cess ; but they began to hint that the drain on the resources of 
the state was unexampled, and that the public debt was increasing 
with a speed at which Montague or Godolphin would have stood 
aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by our fleets and armies 
were, it was acknowledged, profitable as well as honorable ; but, 
now that George the Second was dead, a courtier might venture 
to ask why England was to become a party in a dispute between 
two German powers. What was it to her whether the House of 
Hapsburg or the House of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why 
were the best English regiments fighting on the Main? Why 
were the Prussian battalions paid with English gold ? The great 
minister seemed to think it beneath him to calculate the price of 
victory. As long as the Tower guns were fired, 1 as the streets 
were illuminated, as French banners were carried in triumph 
through London, it was to him matter of indifference to what 
extent the public burdens were augmented. Nay, he seemed to 
glory in the magnitude of those sacrifices which the people, fasci- 
nated by his eloquence and success, had too readily made, and 
would long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste or 
embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the camp of 
Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the 
magnificence of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had 
we borrowed, in four years of war, more than the most skilful and 
economical government would pay in forty years of peace. But 
the prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not be 
doubted that France, smarting and prostrate, would consent to 
fair terms of accommodation ; but this was not what Pitt wanted. 

1 The Tower guns : on the news of every English victory a salute was fired at 
the Tower of London. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 23 

War had made him powerful and popular • with war, all that was 
brightest in his life was associated : for war his talents were pecu- 
liarly fitted. He had at length begun to love war for its own sake, 
and was more disposed to quarrel with neutrals than to make 
peace with. enemies. 

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of 
Hardwicke ; but no member of the government held these opin- 
ions so strongly as George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. 
George Grenville was brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been 
reckoned one of Pitt's personal and political friends. But it is 
difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity more utterly 
unlike each other. Pitt, as his sister often said, knew nothing 
accurately except Spenser's Fairy Queen. He had never applied 
himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was a wretched 
financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of that 
House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never 
studied public law as a system ; and was, indeed, so ignorant of 
the whole subject, that George the Second, on one occasion, com- 
plained bitterly that a man who had never read Vattel should 
presume to undertake the direction of foreign affairs. But these 
defects were more than redeemed by high and rare gifts, by a 
strange power of inspiring great masses of men with confidence 
and affection, by an eloquence which not only delighted the ear, 
but stirred the blood, and brought tears into the eyes, by original- 
ity in devising plans, by vigor in executing them. Grenville, on 
the other hand, was by nature and habit a man of details. He 
had been bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and 
acuteness of the Temple 1 into official and parliamentary life. He 
was supposed to be intimately acquainted with the whole fiscal 
system of the country. He had paid especial attention to the law 
of Parliament, and was so learned in all things relating to the 
privileges and orders of the House of Commons that those who 
loved him least pronounced him the only person competent to 
succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches were generally in- 

1 The Temple: a collective name for the Inner and the Middle Temple, two of 
the four famous Inns of Court or law-colleges of London. 



24 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

structive, and sometimes, from the gravity and earnestness with 
which he spoke, even impressive, but never brilliant, and generally 
tedious. Indeed, even when he was at the head of affairs, he 
sometimes found it difficult to obtain the ear of the House. In 
disposition as well as in intellect, he differed widely from his 
brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would 
scarcely stretch out his hand to take it : and, when it came, he 
threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly 
upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excit- 
able nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popu- 
larity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive ; Grenville's 
character was stern, melancholy, and pertinacious. Nothing was 
more remarkable in him than his inclination always to look on the 
dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, 
always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy 
with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, 
compared him, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit 
whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and 
wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain from weeping 
because she could find nothing at which to weep. Such a man 
was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville op- 
posed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even 
those who hated him to respect him. 

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, 
should take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt 
could see nothing but the trophies ; Grenville could see nothing 
but the bill. Pitt boasted that England was victorious at once in 
America, in India, and in Germany, the umpire of the Continent, 
the mistress of the sea. Grenville cast up the subsidies, sighed 
over the army extraordinaries, and groaned in spirit to think that 
the nation had borrowed eight millions in one year. 

With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to deal. 
Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the young 
King in the late reign, by refusing to support a creature of Bute 
at a Hampshire election. He was not only turned out, but, in the 
closet, when he delivered up his seal of office, was treated with 
gross incivility. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 25 

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. 
But the danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the 
Third of Spain had early conceived a deadly hatred of England. 
Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he 
had been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But 
an English fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples. An 
English captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, had laid 
a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that, within an hour, 
a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment would 
commence. The treaty was signed ; the squadron sailed out of 
the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in ; and from that 
day the ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion to the 
English name. He was at length in a situation in which he might 
hope to gratify that passion. He had recently become King of 
Spain and the Indies. He saw, with envy and apprehension, the 
triumphs of our navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial 
empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathized with the distress 
of the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard, and no 
Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the posses- 
sion of a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles con- 
cluded a secret treaty with France. By this treaty, known as the 
Family Compact, the two powers bound themselves, not in express 
words, but by the clearest implication, to make war on England 
in common. Spain postponed the declaration of hostilities only 
till her fleet, laden with the treasures of America, should have 
arrived. 

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret from 
Pitt. He acted as a man of his capacity and energy might be 
expected to act. He at once proposed to declare war against Spain, 
and to intercept the American fleet. He had determined, it is 
said, to attack without delay both Havana and the Philippines. 

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was foremost 
in opposing it, and was supported by almost the whole cabinet. 
Some of the ministers doubted, or affected to doubt, the correct- 
ness of Pitt's intelligence ; some shrank from the responsibility of 
advising a course so bold and decided as that which he proposed ; 



26 THE EARL OF CHATHAM 

some were weary of his ascendency, and were glad to be rid of 
him on any pretext. One only of his colleagues agreed with him, 
his brother-in-law, Earl Temple. 

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young King 
behaved at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud 
and fiery everywhere else, was always meek and humble in the 
closet, was moved even to tears. The King and the favorite 
urged him to accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. 
Would he like to be appointed governor of Canada? A salary of 
five thousand pounds a year should be annexed to the office. 
Residence would not be required. It was true the governor of 
Canada, as the law then stood, could not be a member of the 
House of Commons. But a bill should be brought in, authorizing 
Pitt to hold his government together with a seat in Parliament, 
and in the preamble should be set forth his claims to the grati- 
tude of his country. Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that his 
anxieties were rather for his wife and family than for himself, and 
that nothing would be so acceptable to him as a mark of royal 
goodness which might be beneficial to those who were dearest to 
him. The hint was taken. The same Gazette which announced 
the retirement of the Secretary of State announced also that, in 
consideration of his great public services, his wife had been cre- 
ated a peeress in her own right, and that a pension of three thou- 
sand pounds a year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. 
It was doubtless thought that the rewards and honors conferred on 
the great minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public 
mind. Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which had 
partly arisen from the contempt which he had always shown for 
money, would be damaged by a pension ; and, indeed, a crowd of 
libels instantly appeared, in which he was accused of having sold 
his country. Many of his true friends thought that he would have 
best consulted the dignity of his character by refusing to accept 
any pecuniary reward from the court. Nevertheless, the general 
opinion of his talents, virtues, and services remained unaltered. 
Addresses were presented to him from several large towns. Lon- 
don showed its admiration and affection in a still more marked 



THE EARL OE CHATHAM. 27 

manner. Soon after his resignation came the Lord Mayor's day. 
The King and the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was one 
of the guests. The young sovereign, seated by his bride in his 
state coach, received a remarkable lesson. He was scarcely 
noticed. All eyes were fixed on the fallen minister ; all acclama- 
tions directed to him. The streets, the balconies, the chimney 
tops, burst into a roar of delight as his chariot passed by. The 
ladies waved their handkerchiefs from the windows. The com- 
mon people clung to the wheels, shook hands with the foot- 
men, and even kissed the horses. Cries of " No Bute ! " " No 
Newcastle salmon!" 1 were mingled with the shouts of "Pitt 
forever ! " 

When Pitt entered Guildhall, he was welcomed by loud huzzahs 
and clapping of hands, in which the very magistrates of the city 
joined. Lord Bute, in the mean time, was hooted and pelted 
through Cheapside, and would, it was thought, have been in some 
danger, if he had not taken the precaution of surrounding his 
carriage with a strong body-guard of boxers. Many persons 
blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the 
King. Indeed Pitt himself afterwards owned that he had done 
wrong. He was led into this error, as he was afterwards led into 
more serious errors, by the influence of his turbulent and mis- 
chievous brother-in-law, Temple. 

The events which immediately followed Pitt's retirement raised 
his fame higher than ever. War with Spain proved to be, as he 
had predicted, inevitable. News came from the West Indies that 
Martinique had been taken by an expedition which he had sent 
forth. Havana fell ; and it was known that he had planned an 
attack on Havana. Manilla capitulated ; and it was believed that 
he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The American fleet, 
which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an immense 
cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could be 

l "Newcastle salmon": an allusion to the unpopular Duke of Newcastle. 
He became prime minister in 1757, and, with Pitt's aid, formed a strong govern- 
ment ; but in 1761 he deserted Pitt, and spoke against his war policy. " Nothing 
in Newcastle's public life," says Massey, "became him like the leaving of it." 



28 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

convinced that the court of Madrid really entertained hostile 
intentions. 

The session of Parliament which followed Pitt's retirement 
passed over without any violent storm. Lord Bute took on him- 
self the most prominent part in the House of Lords. He had 
become Secretary of State, and indeed Prime Minister, without 
having once opened his lips in public except as an actor. There 
was, therefore, no small curiosity to know how he would acquit 
himself. Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar 
of the Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It was gen- 
erally expected that the orator would break down ; but his most 
malicious hearers were forced to own that he had made a better 
figure than they expected. They, indeed, ridiculed his action as 
theatrical, and his style as tumid. They were especially amused 
by the long pauses which, not from hesitation, but from affectation, 
he made at all the emphatic words, and Charles Townshend cried 
out " Minute guns ! " The general opinion however was, that, if 
Bute had been early practised in debate, he might have become 
an impressive speaker. 

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted with the 
lead. The task was not, as yet, a very difficult one : for Pitt did 
not think fit to raise the standard of opposition. His speeches 
at this time were distinguished, not only by that eloquence in 
which he excelled all his rivals, but also by a temperance and a 
modesty which had too often been wanting to his character. 
When war was declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the 
merit of having foreseen what had at length become manifest to 
all, but he carefully abstained from arrogant and acrimonious ex- 
pressions ; and this abstinence was the more honorable to him, 
because his temper, never very placid, was now severely tried, 
both by gout and by calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode 
of warfare, which was soon turned with far more formidable effect 
against themselves. Half the inhabitants of the Grub Street gar- 
rets 1 paid their milk scores, and got their shirts out of pawn, by 

1 Grub Street garrets : Grub Street was the home of petty authors and 
" penny-a-liners." 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 29 

abusing Pitt. His German war, his subsidies, his pension, his 
wife's peerage, were shin of beef and gin, blankets, and baskets of 
small coal, to the starving poetasters of the Fleet. 1 Even in the 
House of Commons, he was, on one occasion during this session, 
assailed with an insolence and malice which called forth the in- 
dignation of men of all parties ; but he endured the outrage with 
majestic patience. In his younger days he had been but too 
prompt to retaliate on those who attacked him : but now, con- 
scious of his great services, and of the space which he filled in 
the eyes of all mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles. 
" This is no season," he said, in the debate of the Spanish war, 
" for altercation and recrimination. A day has arrived when 
every Englishman should stand forth for his country. Arm the 
whole ; be one people ; forget everything but the public. I set 
you the example. Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain 
and disease, for the public I forget both my wrongs and my infirm- 
ities ! " On a general review of his life, we are inclined to think 
that his genius and virtue never shone with so pure an effulgence 
as during the session of 1762. 

The session drew towards the close ; and Bute, emboldened by 
the acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to strike another great 
blow, and to become first minister in name as well as in reality. 
That coalition, which a few months before had seemed all power- 
ful, had been dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had deprived the 
government of popularity. Newcastle had exulted in the fall of 
the illustrious colleague whom he envied and dreaded, and had 
not foreseen that his own doom was at hand. He still tried to 
flatter himself that he was at the head of the government ; but 
insults heaped on insults at length undeceived him. Places which 
had always been considered as in his gift, were bestowed without 
any reference to him. His expostulations only called forth signifi- 
cant hints that it was time for him to retire. One day he pressed 
on Bute the claims of a Whig Prelate to the Archbishopric of 
York. "If your grace thinks so highly of him," answered Bute, 

1 The Fleet : a famous London prison for debtors. It was an easy transition 
from a Grub Street garret to the Fleet. 



30 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

" I wonder that you did not promote him when you had the 
power." Still the old man clung with a desperate grasp to the 
wreck. Seldom, indeed, have Christian meekness and Christian 
humility equalled the meekness and humility of his patient and 
abject ambition. At length he was forced to understand that all 
was over. He quitted that court where he had held high office 
during forty-five years, and hid his shame and regret among the 
cedars of Claremont. Bute became First Lord of the Treasury. 

The favorite had undoubtedly committed a great error. It is 
impossible to imagine a tool better suited to his purposes than 
that which he thus threw away, or rather put into the hands of his 
enemies. If Newcastle had been suffered to play at being first 
minister, Bute might securely and quietly have enjoyed the sub- 
stance of power. The gradual introduction of Tories into all the 
departments of the government might have been effected without 
any violent clamor, if the chief of the great Whig connection had 
been ostensibly at the head of affairs. This was strongly repre- 
sented to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may justly be called 
the father of modern Toryism, of Toryism modified to suit an 
order of things under which the House of Commons is. the most 
powerful body in the state. The theories which had dazzled Bute 
could not impose on the fine intellect of Mansfield. The temerity 
with which Bute provoked the hostility of powerful and deeply 
rooted interests was displeasing to Mansfield's cold and timid 
nature. Expostulation, however, was vain. Bute was impatient of 
advice, drunk with success, eager to be, in show as well as in 
reality, the head of the government. He had engaged in an 
undertaking in which a screen was absolutely necessary to his 
success, and even to his safety. He found an excellent screen 
ready in the very place where it was most needed ; and he rudely 
pushed it away. 

And now the new system of government came into full oper- 
ation. For the first time since the accession of the House of 
Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascendant. The Prime Minis- 
ter himself was a Tory. Lord Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt 
as Secretary of State, was a Tory, and the son of a Tory. Sir 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 31 

Francis Dashwood, a man of slender parts, of small experience, 
and of notoriously immoral character,, was made Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, for no reason that could be imagined, except that he 
was a Tory, and had been a Jacobite. The royal household was 
filled with men whose favorite toast, a few years before, had been 
the King over the water. 1 The relative position of the two great 
national seats of learning was suddenly changed. The Univer- 
sity of Oxford had long been the chief seat of disaffection. In 
troubled times, the High Street had been lined with bayonets ; the 
colleges had been searched by the King's messengers. Grave 
doctors were in the habit of talking very Ciceronian treason in the 
theatre ; and the undergraduates drank bumpers to Jacobite toasts, 
and chanted Jacobite airs. Of four successive Chancellors of the 
University, one had notoriously been in the Pretender's service ; 
the other three were fully believed to be in secret correspondence 
with the exiled family. Cambridge had therefore been especially 
favored by the Hanoverian Princes, and had shown herself grateful 
for their patronage. George the First had enriched her library ; 
George the Second had contributed munificently to her Senate 
House. Bishoprics and deaneries were showered on her children. 
Her Chancellor was Newcastle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy ; 
her High Steward was Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. 
Both her burgesses had held office under the Whig ministry. 
Times had now changed. The University of Cambridge was 
received at St. James with comparative coldness. The answers to 
the addresses of Oxford were all graciousness and warmth. 

The watchwords of the new government were prerogative and 
purity. The sovereign was no longer to be a puppet in the hands 
of any subject, or of any combination of subjects. George the 
Third would not be forced to take ministers whom he disliked, 
as his grandfather had been forced to take Pitt. George the 
Third would not be forced to part with any whom he delighted 
to honor, as his grandfather had been forced to part with Carteret. 
At the same time, the system of bribery which had grown up 

1 The King over the water : James II. or his descendants. After the Revo- 
lution of 1688 James fled to France. 



32 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

during the late reigns was to cease. It was ostentatiously pro- 
claimed that, since the succession of the young King, neither 
constituents nor representatives had been bought with the secret 
service money. To free Britain from corruption and oligarchical 
cabals, to detach her from continental connections, to bring the 
bloody and expensive war with France and Spain to a close, such 
were the specious objects which Bute professed to procure. 

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, at the 
cost of a deep stain on her faith, from her German connections. 
The war with France and Spain was terminated by a peace, honor- 
able indeed and advantageous to our country, yet less honorable 
and less advantageous than might have been expected from a 
long and almost unbroken series of victories, by land and sea, in 
every part of the world. But the only effect of Bute's domestic 
administration was to make faction wilder, and corruption fouler 
than ever. 

The mutual animosity of the Whig and Tory parties had begun 
to languish after the fall of Walpole, and had seemed to be almost 
extinct at the close of the reign of George the Second. It now 
revived in all its force. Many Whigs, it is true, were still in 
office. The Duke of Bedford had signed the treaty with France. 
The Duke of Devonshire, though much out of humor, still con- 
tinued to be Lord Chamberlain. Grenville, who led the House of 
Commons, and Fox, who still enjoyed in silence the immense 
gains of the pay office, had always been regarded as strong Whigs. 
But the bulk of the party throughout the country regarded 
the new minister with abhorrence. There was, indeed, no want 
of popular themes for invective against his character. He was 
a favorite ; and favorites have always been odious in this country. 
No mere favorite had been at the head of the government since 
the dagger of Felton had reached the heart of the Duke of 
Buckingham. After that event the most arbitrary and the most 
frivolous of the Stuarts had felt the necessity of confiding the 
chief direction of affairs to men who had given some proof of 
parliamentary or official talent. Strafford, Falkland, Clarendon, 
Clifford, Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, Danby, Temple, Halifax, Roch- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 33 

ester, Sunderland, whatever their faults might be, were all men 
of acknowledged ability. They did not owe their eminence 
merely to the favor of the sovereign. On the contrary, they owed 
the favor of the sovereign to their eminence. Most of them, 
indeed, had first attracted the notice of the court by the capacity 
and vigor which they had shown in opposition. The Revolution 
seemed to have forever secured the state against the domination 
of a Carr or a Villiers. Now, however, the personal regard of 
the King had at once raised a man who had seen nothing of pub- 
lic business, who had never opened his lips in Parliament, over 
the heads of a crowd of eminent orators, financiers, diplomatists. 
From a private gentleman, this fortunate minion had at once been 
turned into a Secretary of State. He had made his maiden 
speech when at the head of the administration. The vulgar 
resorted to a simple explanation of the phenomenon, and the 
coarsest ribaldry against the Princess Mother was scrawled on 
every wall and sung in every alley. 

This was not all. The spirit of party, roused by impolitic prov- 
ocation from its long sleep, roused in turn a still fiercer and more 
malignant fury, the spirit of national animosity. The grudge of 
Whig against Tory was mingled with the grudge of Englishman 
against Scot. The two sections of the great British people had 
not yet been indissolubly blended together. The events of 1715 
and of 1 745 had left painful and enduring traces. The tradesmen 
of Cornhill had been in dread of seeing their tills and warehouses 
plundered by barelegged mountaineers from the Grampians. They 
still recollected that Black Friday, when the news came that the 
rebels were at Derby, when all the shops in the city were closed, 
and when the Bank of England began to pay in sixpences. The 
Scots, on the other hand, remembered, with natural resentment, 
the severity with which the insurgents had been chastised, the 
military outrages, the humiliating laws, the heads fixed on Temple 
Bar, the fires and quartering blocks of Kennington Common. The 
favorite did not suffer the English to forget from what part of the 
island he came. The cry of all the south was that the public 
offices, the army, the navy, were filled with high-cheeked Drum- 



34 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

monds and Erskines, Macdonalds and Macgillivrays, who could not 
talk a Christian tongue, and some of whom had but lately begun 
to wear Christian breeches. All the old jokes on hills without 
trees, girls without stockings, men eating the food of horses, pails 
emptied from the fourteenth story, were pointed against these 
lucky adventurers. To the honor of the Scots it must be said, 
that their prudence and their pride restrained them from retaliation. 
Like the princess in the Arabian tale, they stopped their ears tight, 
and unmoved by the shrillest notes of abuse, walked on, without 
once looking round, straight towards the Golden Fountain. 

Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste and 
reading, affected, from the moment of his elevation, the character 
of a Maecenas. If he expected to conciliate the public by en- 
couraging literature and art, he was grievously mistaken. Indeed, 
none of the objects of his munificence, with the single exception 
of Johnson, can be said to have been well selected; and the 
public, not unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson rather 
to the Doctor's political prejudices than to his literary merits : for 
a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who had nothing in 
common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had 
stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honored 
with a mark of royal approbation, similar to that which was 
bestowed on the author of the English Dictionary, and of the 
Vanity of Human Wishes. It was remarked that Adam, a Scotch- 
man, was the court architect, and that Ramsay, a Scotchman, was 
the court painter, and was preferred to Reynolds. Mallet, a 
Scotchman, of no high literary fame, and of infamous character, 
partook largely of the liberality of the government. John Home, 
a Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with 
a pension and with a sinecure place. But when the author 1 of the 
"Bard," and of the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," ventured to 
ask for a professorship, the emoluments of which he very much 
needed and for the duties of which he was, in many respects, better 
qualified than any man living, he was refused; and the post was 
bestowed on the pedagogue under whose care the favorite's son- 

1 Thomas Gray. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 35 

in-law, Sir James Lowther, had made such signal proficiency in the 
graces and in the humane virtues. 

Thus, the First Lord of the Treasury was detested by many as 
a Tory, by many as a favorite, and by many as a Scot. All the 
hatred which flowed from these various sources soon mingled, and 
was directed in one torrent of obloquy against the treaty of peace. 
The Duke of Bedford, who had negotiated that treaty, was hooted 
through the streets. Bute was attacked in his chair, 1 and was 
with difficulty rescued by a troop of the guards. He could hardly 
walk the streets in safety without disguising himself. A gentleman 
who died not many years ago used to say that he once recognized 
the favorite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden, muffled in a 
large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over his brows. 
His lordship's established type with the mob was a jack-boot, 
a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A jack-boot, 
generally accompanied by a petticoat, was sometimes fastened on 
a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames. Libels on the 
court, exceeding in audacity and rancor any that had been pub- 
lished for many years, now appeared daily, both in prose and verse. 
Wilkes, with lively insolence, compared the mother of George the 
Third to the mother-of Edward the Third, and the Scotch minister 
to the gentle Mortimer. 2 Churchill, with all the energy of hatred, 
deplored the fate of his country, invaded by a new race of savages, 
more cruel and ravenous than the Picts or the Danes, the poor, 
proud children of leprosy 3 and hunger. It is a slight circum- 
stance, but deserves to be recorded, that in this year pam- 
phleteers first ventured to print at length the names of the great 
men whom they lampooned. George the Second had always been 

the K . His ministers had been Sir R W , Mr. 

P , and the Duke of N . But the libellers of George 

1 Chair: sedan-chair; it was the forerunner of the modern cab. 

2 Mortimer : Roger Mortimer (1325) formed a guilty intrigue with Queen 
Isabella, wife of Edward II. and mother of Edward III. 

3 Leprosy : this disease was introduced into Great Britain during the Crusades ; 
it appears to have lingered in Scotland long after it had disappeared from Eng- 
land. There were lepers in the Shetland Isles as late as the middle or last of the 
1 8th century. 



36 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

the Third, of the Princess Mother, and of Lord Bute did not give 
quarter to a single vowel. 

It was supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged the most 
scurrilous assailants of the government. In truth, those who knew 
his habits tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to 
grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up, it 
might be well suspected that he was at work in some foul, crooked 
labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy work of oppo- 
sition with the same scorn with which he had turned away from 
the filthy work of government. He had the magnanimity to pro- 
claim everywhere the disgust which he felt at the insults offered by 
his own adherents to the Scottish nation, and missed no oppor- 
tunity of extolling the courage and fidelity which the Highland 
regiments had displayed through the whole war. But, though he 
disdained to use any but lawful and honorable weapons, it was 
well known that his fair blows were likely to be far more formid- 
able than the privy thrusts of his brother-in-law's stiletto. 

Bute's heart began to fail him. The Houses were about to meet. 
The treaty would instantly be the subject of discussion. It was 
probable that Pitt, the great Whig connection, and the multitude, 
would all be on the same side. The favorite had professed to hold 
in abhorrence those means by which preceding ministers had kept 
the House of Commons in good humor. He now began to think 
that he had been too scrupulous. His Utopian visions were at an 
end. It was necessary, not only to bribe, but to bribe more 
shamelessly and flagitiously than his predecessors, in order to 
make up for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter by 
what means. Could Grenville do this? Would he do it? His 
firmness and ability had not yet been tried in any perilous crisis. 
He had been generally regarded as a humble follower of his 
brother Temple, and of his brother-in-law Pitt, and was supposed, 
though with little reason, to be still favorably inclined towards 
them. Other aid must be called in, and where was other aid to 
be found? 

There was one man whose sharp and manly logic had often in 
debate been found a match for the lofty and impassioned rhetoric 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 37 

of Pitt, whose talents for jobbing were not inferior to his talents 
for debate, whose dauntless spirit shrank from no difficulty or 
danger, and who was as little troubled with scruples as with fears. 
Henry Fox, or nobody, could weather the storm which was about 
to burst. Yet he was a person to whom the court, even in that 
extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. He had always been 
regarded as a Whig of the Whigs. He had been the friend 
and disciple of Walpole. He had long been connected by close 
ties with William, Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was 
more hated than any man living. So strong was their aversion 
to him that when, in the late reign, he had attempted to form a 
party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had thrown all their 
weight into Newcastle's scale. By the Scots, Fox was abhorred as 
the confidential friend of the conqueror of Culloden. He was, on 
personal grounds, most obnoxious to the Princess Mother, for 
he had, immediately after her husband's death, advised the late 
King to take the education of her son, the heir apparent, entirely 
out of her hands. He had recently given, if possible, still deeper 
offence ; for he had indulged, not without some ground, the 
ambitious hope that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah 
Lennox, might be Queen of England. It had been observed that 
the King at one time rode every morning by the grounds of 
Holland House, 1 and that, on such occasions, Lady Sarah, dressed 
like a shepherdess at a masquerade, was making hay close to the 
road, which was then separated by no wall from the lawn. On 
account of the part which Fox had taken in this singular love 
affair, he was the only member of the Privy Council who was not 
summoned to the meeting at which his Majesty announced his 
intended marriage with the Princess of Mecklenburg. Of all the 
statesmen of the age, therefore, it seemed that Fox was the last 
with whom Bute the Tory, the Scot, the favorite of the Princess 
Mother, could, under any circumstances, act. Yet to Fox Bute 
was now compelled to apply. 

1 Holland House : at the West End of London. Lord Macaulay's last resi- 
dence, " Holly Lodge," was very near Holland House, where he was a frequent 
visitor of Lord Holland's. 



38 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life 
shone forth in full lustre, and made him dear to his children, to 
his dependents, and to his friends ; but as a public man he had no 
title to esteem. In him the vices which were common to the 
whole school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, 
but certainly in their most prominent form ; for his parliamentary 
and official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage, 
his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to 
display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself, covered 
with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the statesmen 
of his time, not because he sinned more than many of them, but 
because he canted less. 

He felt his unpopularity ; but he felt it after the fashion of 
strong minds. He became, not cautious, but reckless, and faced 
the rage of the whole nation with a scowl of inflexible defiance. 
He was born with a sweet and generous temper ; but he had been 
goaded and baited into a savageness which was not natural to him, 
and which amazed and shocked those who knew him best. Such 
was the man to whom Bute, in extreme need, applied for succor. 

That succor Fox was not unwilling to afford. Though by no 
means of an envious temper, he had undoubtedly contemplated 
the success and popularity of Pitt with bitter mortification. He 
thought himself Pitt's match as a debater, and Pitt's superior as a 
man of business. They had long been regarded as well-paired 
rivals. They had started fair in the career of ambition. They 
had long run side by side. At length Fox had taken the lead, 
and Pitt had fallen behind. Then had come a sudden turn of 
fortune, like that in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the 
mire, and had not only been defeated, but befouled. Pitt had 
reached the goal, and received the prize. The emoluments of the 
Pay Office might induce the defeated statesman to submit in 
silence to the ascendency of his competitor, but could not satisfy 
a mind conscious of great powers, and sore from great vexations. 
As soon, therefore, as a party arose adverse to the war and to the 
supremacy of the great war minister, the hopes of Fox began to 
revive. His feuds with the Princess Mother, with the Scots, with 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 39 

the Tories, he was ready to forget if, by the help of his old ene- 
mies, he could now regain the importance which he had lost, and 
confront Pitt on equal terms. 

The alliance was, therefore, soon concluded. Fox was assured 
that, if he would pilot the government out of its embarrassing sit- 
uation, he should be rewarded with a peerage, of which he had 
long been desirous. He undertook on his side to obtain, by fair 
or foul means, a vote in favor of the peace. In consequence of 
this arrangement he became leader of the House of Commons ; 
and Grenville, stifling his vexation as well as he could, sullenly 
acquiesced in the change. 

Fox had expected that his influence would secure to the court 
the cordial support of some eminent Whigs who were his personal 
friends, particularly of the Duke of Cumberland and of the Duke 
of Devonshire. He was disappointed, and soon found that, in 
addition to all his other difficulties, he must reckon on the oppo- 
sition of the ablest Prince of the blood, and the great house of 
Cavendish. 

But he had pledged himself to win the battle ; and he was not 
a man to go back. It was no time for squeamishness. Bute was 
made to comprehend that the ministry could be saved only by 
practising the tactics of Walpole to an extent at which Walpole 
himself would have stared. The Pay Office was turned into a 
mart for votes. Hundreds of members were closeted there with 
Fox, and as there is too much reason to believe, departed carry- 
ing with them the wages of infamy. It was affirmed by persons 
who had the best opportunities of obtaining information, that 
twenty-five thousand pounds were thus paid away in a single 
morning. The lowest bribe given, it was said, was a bank-note 
for two hundred pounds. 

Intimidation was joined with corruption. All ranks, from the 
highest to the lowest, were to be taught that the King would be 
obeyed. The Lords Lieutenants of several counties were dis- 
missed. The Duke of Devonshire was especially singled out as 
the victim by whose fate the magnates of England were to take 
warning. His wealth, rank, and influence, his stainless private 



40 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

character, and the constant attachment of his family to the House 
of Hanover did not secure him from gross personal indignity. It 
was known that he disapproved of the course which the govern- 
ment had taken ; and it was accordingly determined to humble 
the Prince of the Whigs, as he had been nicknamed by the Prin- 
cess Mother. He went to the palace to pay his duty, " Tell him," 
said the King to a page, " that I will not see him." The page 
hesitated. " Go to him," said the King, " and tell him those very 
words." The message was delivered. The Duke tore off his 
gold key, 1 and went away boiling with anger. His relations who 
were in office instantly resigned. A few days later, the King 
called for the list of Privy Councillors, and with his own hand 
struck out the Duke's name. 

In this step there was at least courage, though little wisdom or 
good-nature. But, as nothing was too high for the revenge of the 
court, so also was nothing too low. A persecution, such as had 
never been known before, and has never been known since, raged 
in every public department. Great numbers of humble and labo- 
rious clerks were deprived of their bread, not because they had 
neglected their duties, not because they had taken an active part 
against the ministry, but merely because they had owed their sit- 
uations to the recommendation of some nobleman or gentleman 
who was against the peace. The proscription extended to tide- 
waiters, to gauge rs, to doorkeepers. One poor man to whom a 
pension had been given for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, 
was deprived of it because he had been befriended by the Duke 
of Grafton. An aged widow, who, on account of her husband's 
services in the navy, had, many years before, been made house- 
keeper to a public office, was dismissed from her situation, be- 
cause it was imagined that she was distantly connected by mar- 
riage with the Cavendish family. The public clamor, as may well 
be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But the louder it 
grew, the more resolute did Fox go on with the work which he 
had begun. His old friends could not conceive what had pos- 
sessed him. " I could forgive," said the Duke of Cumberland^ 

1 Gold key : badge of office. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 41 

" Fox's political vagaries ; but I am quite confounded by his in- 
humanity. Surely he used to be the best-natured of men." 

At last Fox went so far as to take a legal opinion on the ques- 
tion whether the patents 1 granted by George the Second were 
binding on George the Third. It is said, that if his colleagues 
had not flinched, he would at once have turned out the Tellers of 
the Exchequer and Justices in Eyre. 

Meanwhile the Parliament met. The ministers, more hated by 
the people than ever, were secure of a majority, and they had also 
reason to hope that they would have the advantage in the debates 
as well as in the divisions; for Pitt was confined to his chamber 
by a severe attack of gout. His friends moved to defer the con- 
sideration of the treaty till he should be able to attend : but the 
motion was rejected. The great day arrived. The discussion had 
lasted some time, when a loud huzza was heard in the palace 
yard. The noise came nearer and nearer, up the stairs, through 
the lobby. The door opened, and from the midst of a shouting 
multitude came forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants. 
His face was thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannel, his 
crutch in his hand. The bearers set him down within the bar. 
His friends instantly surrounded him, and with their help he 
crawled to his seat near the table. In this condition he spoke 
three hours and a half against the peace. During that time he 
was repeatedly forced to sit down and to use cordials. It may 
well be supposed that his voice was faint, that his action was 
languid, and that his speech, though occasionally brilliant and 
impressive, was feeble when compared with his best oratorical 
performances. But those who remembered what he had done, 
and who saw what he suffered, listened to him with emotion 
stronger than any that mere eloquence can produce. He was 
unable to stay for the division, and was carried away from the 
House amidst shouts as loud as those which had announced his 
arrival. 

A large majority approved the peace. The exultation of the 
court was boundless. "Now," exclaimed the Princess Mother, 

1 Patents : i.e., patents of nobility. 



42 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

" my son is really King." The young sovereign spoke of himself 
as freed from the bondage in which his grandfather had been held. 
On one point, it was announced, his mind was unalterably made 
up. Under no circumstances whatever, should those Whig gran- 
dees, who had enslaved his predecessors and endeavored to en- 
slave himself, be restored to power. 

This vaunting was premature. The real strength of the favorite 
was by no means proportioned to the number of votes which he 
had, on one particular division, been able to command. He was 
soon again in difficulties. The most important part of his budget 
was a tax on cider. This measure was opposed, not only by those 
who were generally hostile to his administration, but also by many 
of his supporters. The name of excise had always been hateful to 
the Tories. One of the chief crimes of Walpole in their eyes, had 
been his partiality for this mode of raising money. The Tory 
Johnson had in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a definition of 
the word excise, 1 that the Commissioners of Excise had seriously 
thought of prosecuting him. The counties which the new impost 
particularly affected had always been Tory counties. It was the 
boast of John Philips, the poet of the English vintage, that the 
cider-land had ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the 
pruning-hooks of her thousand orchards had been beaten into 
swords for the service of the ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of Bute's 
fiscal scheme was to produce union between the gentry and yeo- 
manry of the cider-land and the Whigs of the capital. Hereford- 
shire and Worcestershire were in a flame. The city of London, 
though not so directly interested, was, if possible, still more 
excited. The debates on this question irreparably damaged the 
government. Dashwood's financial statement had been confused 
and absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the House 
with roars of laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious of 
his unfitness for the high situation which he held, and exclaimed 
in a comical fit of despair, " What shall I do ? The boys will 

i Excise: Johnson thus denned this word, — " Excise : a hateful tax levied on 
commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches 
hired by those to whom excise is paid." 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 43 

point at me in the street, and cry, ' There goes the worst Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer that ever was.' " George Grenville came 
to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favorite theme, the pro- 
fusion with which the late war had been carried on. That pro- 
fusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on the 
gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax 
laid, and dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them 
tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fret- 
ful tone. " I say, sir, let them tell me where. I repeat it, sir ; I 
am entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him 
Pitt had come down to the House that night, and had been bit- 
terly provoked by the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged 
himself by murmuring, in a whine resembling Grenville's, a line 
of a well-known song, " Gentle Shepherd, tell me where." " If," 

cried Grenville, " gentlemen are to be treated in this way " 

Pitt, as was his fashion when he meant to mark extreme contempt, 
rose deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, 
leaving his brother-in-law in convulsions of rage and everybody 
else in convulsions of laughter. It was long before Grenville lost 
the nickname of the Gentle Shepherd. 

But the ministry had vexations still more serious to endure. 
The hatred which the Tories and Scots bore to Fox was im- 
placable. In a moment of extreme peril, they had consented 
to put themselves under his guidance. But the aversion with 
which they regarded him broke forth as soon as the crisis seemed 
to be over. Some of them attacked him about the accounts of 
the Pay Office. Some of them rudely interrupted him when 
speaking, by laughter and ironical cheers. He was naturally 
desirous to escape from so disagreeable a situation, and demanded 
the peerage which had been promised as the reward of his services. 

It was clear that there must be some change in the composition 
of the ministry. But scarcely any, even of those who, from their 
situation, might be supposed to be in all the secrets of the 
government, anticipated what really took place. To the amaze- 
ment of the Parliament and the nation it was suddenly announced 
that Bute had resigned. 



44 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Twenty different explanations of this strange step were suggested. 
Some attributed it to profound design, and some to sudden panic. 
Some said that the lampoons of the opposition had driven the 
Earl from the field ; some that he had taken office only in order 
to bring the war to a close, and had always meant to retire when 
that object had been accomplished. He publicly assigned ill 
health as his reason for quitting business, and privately complained 
that he was not cordially seconded by his colleagues, and that 
Lord Mansfield, in particular, whom he had himself brought 
into the cabinet, gave him no support in the House of Peers. 
Mansfield was, indeed, far too sagacious not to perceive that 
Bute's situation was one of great peril, and far too timorous to 
thrust himself into peril for the sake of another. The probability, 
however, is that Bute's conduct on this occasion, like the conduct 
of most men on most occasions, was determined by mixed motives. 
We suspect that he was sick of office ; for this is a feeling much 
more common among ministers than persons who see public life 
from a distance are disposed to believe ; and nothing could be 
more natural than that this feeling should take possession of the 
mind of Bute. In general, a statesman climbs by slow degrees. 
Many laborious years elapse before he reaches the topmost 
pinnacle of preferment. In the earlier part of his career, there- 
fore, he is constantly lured on by seeing something above him. 
During his ascent he gradually becomes inured to the annoyances 
which belong to a life of ambition. By the time that he has at- 
tained the highest point, he has become patient of labor and callous 
to abuse. He is kept constant to his vocation, in spite of all its 
discomforts, at first by hope, and at last by habit. It was not 
so with Bute.^ His whole public life lasted little more than two 
years. On the day on which he became a politician he became 
a cabinet minister. In a few months he was, both in name and 
in show, chief of the administration. Greater than he had been 
he could not be. If what he already possessed was vanity and 
vexation of spirit, no delusion remained to entice him onward. 
He had been cloyed with the pleasures of ambition before he had 
been seasoned to its pains. His habits had not been such as 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 45 

were likely to fortify his mind against obloquy and public hatred. 
He had reached his forty- eighth year in dignified ease, without 
knowing, by personal experience, what it was to be ridiculed and 
slandered. All at once, without any previous initiation, he had found 
himself exposed to such a storm of invective and satire as had never 
burst on the head of any statesman. The emoluments of office 
were now nothing to him : for he had just succeeded to a princely 
property by the death of his father-in-law. All the honors which 
could be bestowed on him he had already secured. He had 
obtained the Garter for himself, and a British peerage for his son. 
He seems also to have imagined that by quitting the treasury he 
should escape from danger and abuse without really resigning 
power, and should still be able to exercise in private supreme 
influence over the royal mind. 

Whatever may have been his motives, he retired. Fox at the 
same time took refuge in the House of Lords ; and George Gren- 
ville became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. 

We believe that those who made this arrangement fully in- 
tended that Grenville should be a mere puppet in the hands of 
Bute ; for Grenville was as yet very imperfectly known even to 
those who had observed him long. He passed for a mere official 
drudge ; and he had all the industry, the minute accuracy, the 
formality, the tediousness, which belong to the character. But 
he had other qualities which had not yet shown themselves, 
devouring ambition, dauntless courage, self-confidence amounting 
to presumption, and a temper which could not endure opposition. 
He was not disposed to be anybody's tool ; and he had no attach- 
ment, political or personal, to Bute. The two men had, indeed, 
nothing in common, except a strong propensity towards harsh 
and unpopular courses. Their principles were fundamentally 
different. Bute was a Tory. Grenville would have been very 
angry with any person who should have denied his claim to be 
a Whig. He was more prone to tyrannical measures than Bute : 
but he loved tyranny only when disguised under the forms of 
constitutional liberty. He mixed up, after a fashion then not 



46 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

very unusual, the theories of the republicans of the seventeenth cen- 
tury with the technical maxims of English law, and thus succeeded 
in combining anarchical speculation with arbitrary practice. The 
voice of the people was the voice of God • but the only legitimate 
organ through which the voice of the people could be uttered 
was the Parliament. All power was from the people ; but to the 
Parliament the whole power of the people had been delegated. 
No Oxonian divine had ever, even in the years which immediately 
followed the Restoration, 1 demanded for the King so abject, so 
unreasoning a homage, as Grenville on what he considered as the 
purest Whig principles demanded for the Parliament. As he 
wished to see the Parliament despotic over the nation, so he wished 
to see it also despotic over the court. In his view the Prime 
Minister, possessed of the confidence of the House of Commons, 
ought to be Mayor of the Palace. 2 The King was a mere Chil- 
deric or Chilperic, who might well think himself lucky in being 
permitted to enjoy such handsome apartments at St. James's, and 
so fine a park at Windsor. 

Thus the opinions of Bute and those of Grenville were diamet- 
rically opposed. Nor was there any private friendship between 
the two statesmen. Grenville's nature was not forgiving ; and he 
well remembered how, a few months before, he had been com- 
pelled to yield the lead of the House of Commons to Fox. 

We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst admin- 
istration which has governed England since the Revolution was 
that of George Grenville. His public acts may be classed under 
two heads, outrages on the liberty of the people, and outrages on 
the dignity of the crown. 

He began by making war on the press. John Wilkes, 
member of Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out for persecu- 
tion. Wilkes had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of 

1 The Restoration : the restoration of monarchy (after the Revolution of 1648 
and the period of the Commonwealth) in the person of Charles II., 1660. 

2 Mayor of the Palace: in the 7th century the French kings, the " do-nothing " 
Childerics and Chilperics, were really ruled by the officers known as Mayors of 
the Palace. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 47 

the most profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town. 
He was a man of taste, reading, and engaging manners. His 
sprightly conversation was the delight of green-rooms and taverns, 
and pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under 
restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars of his amours, 
and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His expensive 
debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews. He was 
soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a politi- 
cal adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His speak- 
ing, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his 
hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so 
hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite, to 
flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a 
weekly paper, called the North Briton. This journal, written with 
some pleasantry, and great audacity and impudence, had a con- 
siderable number of readers. Forty-four numbers had been pub- 
lished when Bute resigned ; and, though almost every number 
had contained matter grossly libellous, no prosecution had been 
instituted. The forty-fifth number was innocent when compared 
with the majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed 
contained nothing so strong as may in our time be found daily in 
the leading articles of the Times and Moi-ning Chronicle. But 
Grenville was now at the head of affairs. A new spirit had been 
infused into the administration. Authority was to be upheld. 
The government was no longer to be braved with impunity. 
Wilkes was arrested under a general warrant, conveyed to the 
Tower, and confined there with circumstances of unusual severity. 
His papers were seized, and carried to the Secretary of State. 
These harsh and illegal measures produced a violent outbreak of 
popular rage, which was soon changed to delight and exultation. 
The arrest was pronounced unlawful by the Court of Common 
Pleas, in which Chief Justice Pratt presided, and the prisoner was 
discharged. This victory over the government was celebrated 
with enthusiasm both in London and in the cider-counties. 

While the ministers were daily becoming more odious to the 
nation, they were doing their best to make themselves also odious 



48 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

to the court. They gave the King plainly to understand that 
they were determined not to be Lord Bute's creatures, and ex- 
acted a promise that no secret adviser should have access to the 
royal ear. They soon found reason to suspect that this promise 
had not been observed. They remonstrated in terms less respect- 
ful than their master had been accustomed to hear, and gave him 
a fortnight to make his choice between his favorite and his cabinet. 

George the Third was greatly disturbed. He had but a few 
weeks before exulted in his deliverance from the yoke of the great 
Whig connection. He had even declared that his honor would 
not permit him ever again to admit the members of that connec- 
tion into his service. He now found that he had only exchanged 
one set of masters for another set still harsher and more imperi- 
ous. In his distress he thought on Pitt. From Pitt it was possible 
that better terms might be obtained than either from Grenville, or 
from the party of which Newcastle was the head. 

Grenville, on his return from an excursion into the country, 
repaired to Buckingham House. He was astonished to find at 
the entrance a chair, the shape of which was well known to him, 
and indeed to all London. It was distinguished by a large boot, 
made for the purpose of accommodating the great Commoner's 
gouty leg. Grenville guessed the whole. His brother-in-law was 
closeted with the King. Bute, provoked by what he considered 
as the unfriendly and ungrateful conduct of his successors, had 
himself proposed that Pitt should be summoned to the palace. 

Pitt had two audiences on two successive days. What passed 
at the first interview led him to expect that the negotiation would 
be brought to a satisfactory close ; but on the morrow he found 
the King less complying. The best account, indeed the only 
trustworthy account of the conference, is that which was taken 
from Pitt's own mouth by Lord Hardwicke. It appears that Pitt 
strongly represented the importance of conciliating those chiefs of 
the Whig party who had been so unhappy as to incur the royal 
displeasure. They had, he said, been the most constant friends 
of the House of Hanover. Their power was great ; they had 
been long versed in public business. If they were to be under 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 49 

sentence of exclusion, a solid administration could not be formed. 
His Majesty could not bear to think of putting himself into the 
hands of those whom he had recently chased from his court with 
the strongest marks of anger. " I am sorry, Mr. Pitt," he said, " but 
I see this will not do. My honor is concerned. I must support 
my honor." How his Majesty succeeded in supporting his honor, 
we shall soon see. 

Pitt retired, and the King was reduced to request the ministers, 
whom he had been on the point of discarding, to remain in office. 
During the two years which followed, Grenville, now closely 
leagued with the Bedfords, was the master of the court ; and a 
hard master he proved. He knew that he was kept in place only 
because there was no choice except between himself and the 
Whigs. That under any circumstances the Whigs would be for- 
given, he thought impossible. The late attempt to get rid of him 
had roused his resentment ; the failure of that attempt had lib- 
erated him from all fear. He had never been very courtly. He 
now began to hold a language, to which, since the days of Cornet 
Joyce and President Bradshaw, no English King had been com- 
pelled to listen. 

In one matter, indeed, Grenville, at the expense of justice and 
liberty, gratified the passions of the court while gratifying his own. 
The persecution of Wilkes was eagerly pressed. He had written 
a parody on Pope's Essay on Man, entitled the Essay on Woman, 
and had appended to it notes, in ridicule of Warburton's famous 
Commentary. This composition was exceedingly profligate, but 
not more so, we think, than some of Pope's own works, the imita- 
tion of the second satire of the first book of Horace, for example : 
and, to do Wilkes justice, he had not, like Pope, given his ribaldry 
to the world. He had merely printed at a private press a very 
small number of copies, which he meant to present to some of his 
boon companions, whose morals were in no more danger of being 
corrupted by a loose book than a negro of being tanned by a 
warm sun. A tool of the government, by giving a bribe to the 
printer, procured a copy of this trash, and placed it in the hands 
of the ministers. The ministers resolved to visit Wilkes's offence 



50 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

against decorum with the utmost rigor of the law. What share 
piety and respect for morals had in dictating this resolution, our 
readers may judge from the fact that no person was more eager 
for bringing the libertine poet to punishment than Lord March, 
afterwards Duke of Queensberry. On the first day of the session 
of Parliament, the book, thus disgracefully obtained, was laid on 
the table of the Lords by the Earl of Sandwich, whom the Duke 
of Bedford's interest had made Secretary of State. The unfort- 
unate author had not the slightest suspicion that his licentious 
poem had ever been seen, except by his printer and by a few of 
his dissipated companions, till it was produced in full Parliament. 
Though he was a man of easy temper, averse from danger, and 
not very susceptible of shame, the surprise, the disgrace, the pros- 
pect of utter ruin, put him beside himself. He picked a quarrel 
with one of Lord Bute's dependents, fought a duel, was seriously 
wounded, and when half recovered, fled to France. His enemies 
had now their own way both in the Parliament and in the King's 
Bench. He was censured, expelled from the House of Commons, 
outlawed. His works were ordered to be burned by the common 
hangman. Yet was the multitude still true to him. In the minds 
even of many moral and religious men his crime seemed light 
when compared with the crime of his accusers. The conduct of 
Sandwich, in particular, excited universal disgust. His own vices 
were notorious ; and, only a fortnight before he laid the Essay on 
Woman before the House of Lords, he had been drinking and 
singing loose catches with Wilkes at one of the most dissolute 
clubs in London. Shortly after the meeting of Parliament, the 
Beggar's Opera was acted at Covent Garden theatre. When 
Macheath uttered the words "That Jemmy Twitcher should 
peach me I own surprised me," pit, boxes, and galleries burst 
into a roar which seemed likely to bring the roof down. From 
that day Sandwich was universally known by the nickname of 
Jemmy Twitcher. The ceremony of burning the North Briton 
was interrupted by a riot. The constables were beaten ; the paper 
was rescued ; and, instead of it, a jack-boot and a petticoat were 
committed to the flames. Wilkes had instituted an action for the 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. . 51 

seizure of his papers against the Under Secretary of State. The 
jury gave a thousand pounds damages. But neither these nor any 
other indications of public feeling had power to move Grenville. 
He had the Parliament with him ; and, according to his political 
creed, the sense of the nation was to be collected from the Parlia- 
ment alone. 

Soon, however, he found reason to fear that even the Parlia- 
ment might fail him. On the question of the legality of general 
warrants, the opposition, having on its side all sound principles, 
all constitutional authorities, and the voice of the whole nation, 
mustered in great force, and was joined by many who did not 
ordinarily vote against the government. On one occasion the 
ministry, in a very full House, had a majority of only fourteen 
votes. The storm, however, blew over. The spirit of the oppo- 
sition, from whatever cause, began to flag at the moment when 
success seemed almost certain. The session ended without any 
change. Pitt, whose eloquence had shone with its usual lustre in 
all the principal debates, and whose popularity was greater than 
ever, was still a private man. Grenville, detested alike by the 
court and by the people, was still minister. 

As soon as the Houses had risen, Grenville took a step which 
proved, even more signally than any of his past acts, how despotic, 
how acrimonious, and how fearless his nature was. Among the 
gentlemen not ordinarily opposed to the government, who, on the 
great constitutional question of general warrants, had voted with 
the minority, was Henry Conway, brother of the Earl of Hert- 
ford, a brave soldier, a tolerable speaker, and a well-meaning, 
though not a wise or vigorous politician. He was now deprived 
of his regiment, the merited reward of faithful and gallant service 
in two wars. It was confidently asserted that in this violent meas- 
ure the King heartily concurred. 

But whatever pleasure the persecution of Wilkes, or the dis- 
missal of Conway, may have given to the royal mind, it is certain 
that his Majesty's aversion to his ministers increased day by day. 
Grenville was as frugal of the public money as of his own, and 
morosely refused to accede to the King's request that a few thou- 



52 • THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

sand pounds might be expended in buying some open fields to the 
west of the gardens of Buckingham House. In consequence of 
this refusal, the fields were soon covered with buildings, and the 
King and Queen were overlooked in their most private walks by 
the upper windows of a hundred houses. Nor was this the worst. 
Grenville was as liberal of words as he was sparing of guineas. 
Instead of explaining himself in that clear, concise, and lively 
manner which alone could win the attention of a young mind new 
to business, he spoke in the closet just as he spoke in the House 
of Commons. When he had harangued two hours, he looked 
at his watch, as he had been in the habit of looking at the clock 
opposite the Speaker's chair, apologized for the length of his dis- 
course, and then went on for an hour more. The members of the 
House of Commons can cough an orator down, or can walk away 
to dinner ; and they were by no means sparing in the use of these 
privileges when Grenville was on his legs. But the poor young 
King had to endure all this eloquence with mournful civility. To 
the end of his life he continued to talk with horror of Grenville's 
orations. 

About this time took place one of the most singular events in 
Pitt's life. There was a certain Sir William Pynsent, a Somerset- 
shire baronet of Whig politics, who had been a member of the 
House of Commons in the days of Queen Anne, and had retired 
to rural privacy when the Tory party, towards the end of her 
reign, obtained the ascendency in her councils. His manners were 
eccentric. His morals lay under very odious imputations. But his 
fidelity to his political opinions was unalterable. During fifty years 
of seclusion he continued to brood over the circumstances which 
had driven him from public life, the dismissal of the Whigs, the 
peace of Utrecht, the desertion of our allies. He now thought 
that he perceived a close analogy between the well-remembered 
events of his youth and the events which he had witnessed in 
extreme old age ; between the disgrace of Marlborough and the 
disgrace of Pitt ; between the elevation of Harley and the eleva- 
tion of Bute ; between the treaty negotiated by St. John and the 
treaty negotiated by Bedford ; between the wrongs of the House 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 53 

of Austria in 171 2 and the wrongs of the House of Branden- 
burg in 1762. This fancy took such possession of the old man's 
mind that he determined to leave his whole property to Pitt. In 
this way Pitt unexpectedly came into possession of near three 
thousand pounds a year. Nor could all the malice of his enemies 
find any ground for reproach in the transaction. Nobody could call 
him a legacy hunter. Nobody could accuse him of seizing that 
to which others had a better claim. For he had never in his life 
seen Sir William ; and Sir William had left no relation so near as 
to be entitled to form any expectations respecting the estate. 

The fortunes of Pitt seemed to flourish ; but his health was 
worse than ever. We cannot find that, during the session which 
began in January, 1765, he once appeared in Parliament. He 
remained some months in profound retirement at Hayes, his favor- 
ite villa, scarcely moving except from his arm-chair to his bed, 
and from his bed to his arm-chair, and often employed his wife 
as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some 
of his detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed 
quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character, 
high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which 
did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which should 
have been far above them, he had yet been, through life, in the 
habit of practising them. It was, therefore, now surmised that, 
having acquired all the consideration which could be derived from 
eloquence and from great services to the state, he had determined 
not to make himself cheap by often appearing in public, but, 
under the pretext of ill health, to surround himself with mystery, 
to emerge only at long intervals and on momentous occasions, and 
at other times to deliver his oracles only to a few favored votaries, 
who were suffered to make pilgrimages to his shrine. If such 
were his object, it was for a time fully attained. Never was the 
magic of his name so powerful, never was he regarded by his 
country with such superstitious veneration, as during this year of 
silence and seclusion. 

While Pitt was thus absent from Parliament, Grenville proposed 
a measure destined to produce a great revolution, the effects of 



54 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

which will long be felt by the whole human race. We speak of 
the act for imposing stamp duties on the North American colonies. 
The plan was eminently characteristic of its author. Every feat- 
ure of the parent was found in the child. A timid statesman 
would have shrunk from a step, of which Walpole, at a time when 
the colonies were far less powerful, had said, " He who shall 
propose it will be a much bolder man than I." But the nature of 
Grenville was insensible to fear. A statesman of large views would 
have felt that to lay taxes at Westminster on New England and 
New York was a course opposed, not indeed to the letter of the 
Statute Book, or to any decision contained in the Term Reports, 
but to the principles of good government, and to the spirit of the 
constitution. A statesman of large views would also have felt that 
ten times the estimated produce of the American stamps would 
have been dearly purchased by even a transient quarrel between 
the mother country and the colonies. But Grenville knew of no 
spirit of the constitution distinct from the letter of the law ; and 
of no national interests except those which are expressed by 
pounds, shillings, and pence. That his policy might give birth to 
deep discontents in all the provinces, from the shore of the Great 
Lakes to the Mexican sea ; that France and Spain might seize the 
opportunity of revenge ; that the empire might be dismembered : 
that the debt, that debt with the amount of which he perpetually 
reproached Pitt, might, in consequence of his own policy, be 
doubled ; these were possibilities which never occurred to that 
small, sharp mind. 

The Stamp Act will be remembered as long as the globe lasts. 
But, at the time, it attracted much less notice in this country than 
another Act 1 which is now almost utterly forgotten. The King 
fell ill, and was thought to be in a dangerous state. His com- 
plaint, 2 we believe, was the same which, at a later period, repeat- 
edly incapacitated him for the performance of his regal functions. 
The heir-apparent was only two years old. It was clearly proper 

1 Act : the Regency Act, 1765. 

2 His complaint : it was incipient insanity. He himself declared that he should 
go mad, as he did at a later period. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 55 

to make provision for the administration of the government, in 
case of a minority. The discussions on this point brought the 
quarrel between the court and the ministry to a crisis. The King 
wished to be intrusted with the power of naming a regent by will. 
The ministers feared, or affected to fear, that, if this power were 
conceded to him, he would name the Princess Mother, nay, possi- 
bly, the Earl of Bute. They, therefore, insisted on introducing 
into the bill words confining the King's choice to the royal family. 
Having thus excluded Bute, they urged the King to let them, in 
the most marked manner, exclude the Princess Dowager also. 
They assured him that the House of Commons would undoubtedly 
strike her name out, and by this threat they wrung from him a 
reluctant assent. In a few days it appeared that the representa- 
tions by which they had induced the King to put this gross and 
public affront on his mother were unfounded. The friends of the 
Princess in the House of Commons moved that her name should 
be inserted. The ministers could not decently attack the parent 
of their master. They hoped that the opposition would come to 
their help, and put on them a force to which they would gladly 
have yielded. But the majority of the opposition, though hating 
the Princess, hated Grenville more, beheld his embarrassment 
with delight, and would do nothing to extricate him from it. The 
Princess's name was accordingly placed in the list of persons 
qualified to hold the regency. 

The King's resentment was now at the height. The present 
evil seemed to him more intolerable than any other. Even the 
junta of Whig grandees could not treat him worse than he had 
been treated by his present ministers. In his distress, he poured 
out his whole heart to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. The 
Duke was not a man to be loved ; but he was eminently a man to 
be trusted. He had an intrepid temper, a strong understanding, 
and a high sense of honor and duty. As a general, he belonged to 
a remarkable class of captains — captains, we mean, whose fate it 
has been to lose almost all the battles which they have fought, and 
yet to be reputed stout and skilful soldiers. Such captains were 
Coligni and William the Third. We might, perhaps, add Marshal 



56 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Soult to the list. The bravery of the Duke of Cumberland was 
such as distinguished him even among the princes of his brave 
house. The indifference with which he rode about amidst mus- 
ket-balls and cannon-balls was not the highest proof of his forti- 
tude. Hopeless maladies, horrible surgical operations, far from 
unmanning him, did not even discompose him. With courage 
he had the virtues which are akin to courage. He spoke the 
truth, was open in enmity and friendship, and upright in all his 
dealings. But his nature was hard ; and what seemed to him jus- 
tice was rarely tempered with mercy. He was, therefore, during 
many years one of the most unpopular men in England. The 
severity with which he had treated the rebels after the battle of 
Culloden had gained for him the name of the Butcher. His at- 
tempts to introduce into the army of England, then in a most dis- 
orderly state, the rigorous discipline of Potsdam, 1 had excited still 
stronger disgust. Nothing was too bad to be believed of him. 
Many honest people were so absurd as to fancy that, if he were 
left Regent during the minority of his nephews, there would be 
another smothering in the Tower. 2 These feelings, however, had 
passed away. The Duke had been living, during some years, in 
retirement. The English, full of animosity against the Scots, now 
blamed his Royal Highness only for having left so many Camerons 
and Macphersons to be made gaugers and custom-house officers. 
He was, therefore, at present, a favorite with his countrymen, and 
especially with the inhabitants of London. 

He had little reason to love the King, and had shown clearly, 
though not obtrusively, his dislike of the system which had lately 
been pursued. But he had high and almost romantic notions of 
the duty which, as a prince of the blood, he owed to the head of 
his house. He determined to extricate his nephew from bondage, 
and to effect a reconciliation between the Whig party and the 
throne, on terms honorable to both. 

1 Potsdam: an allusion to Frederick the Great and his stern military discipline. 

2 Another smothering in the tower : an allusion to the murder of the young 
princes, Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York, by Richard III. in 1483. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 57 

In this mind he set off for Hayes, and was admitted to Pitt's 
sick-room ; for Pitt would not leave his chamber, and would not 
communicate with any messenger of inferior dignity. And now 
began a long series of errors, on the part of the illustrious states- 
man, errors which involved his country in difficulties and distresses 
more serious even than those from which his genius had formerly 
rescued her. His language was haughty, unreasonable, almost 
unintelligible. The only thing which could be discerned through 
a cloud of vague and not very gracious phrases, was that he would 
not at that moment take office. The truth, we believe, was this : 
Lord Temple, who was Pitt's evil genius, had just formed a new 
scheme of politics. Hatred of Bute and of the Princess had, it 
should seem, taken entire possession of Temple's soul. He had 
quarrelled with his brother George, because George had been 
connected with Bute and the Princess. Now that George had 
appeared to be the enemy of Bute and of the Princess, Temple 
was eager to bring about a general family reconciliation. The three 
brothers, as Temple, Grenville, and Pitt were popularly called, 
might make a ministry, without leaning for aid either on Bute or 
on the Whig connection. With such views, Temple used all his 
influence to dissuade Pitt from acceding to the propositions of 
the Duke of Cumberland. Pitt was not convinced. But Temple 
had an influence over him such as no other person had ever pos- 
sessed. They were very old friends, very near relations. If Pitt's 
talents and fame had been useful to Temple, Temple's purse had 
formerly, in times of great need, been useful to Pitt. They had 
never been parted in politics. Twice they had come into the 
cabinet together ; twice they had left it together. Pitt could not 
bear to think of taking office without his chief ally. Yet he felt 
that he was doing wrong, that he was throwing away a great oppor- 
tunity of serving his country. The obscure and unconciliatory 
style of the answers which he returned to the overtures of the 
Duke of Cumberland may be ascribed to the embarrassment and 
vexation of a mind not at peace with itself. It is said that he 
mournfully exclaimed to Temple, 



58 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

" Exstinxi * te meque, soror, populumque patresque 
Sidonios urbemque tuam." 

— vEneid, IV. 682. 

The prediction was but too just. 

Finding Pitt impracticable, the Duke of Cumberland advised 
the King to submit to necessity, and to keep Grenville and the 
Bedfords. It was, indeed, not a time at which offices could safely 
be left vacant. The unsettled state of the government had pro- 
duced a general relaxation through all the departments of the public 
service. Meetings, which at another time would have been harm- 
less, now turned to riots, and rapidly rose almost to the dignity of 
rebellions. The Houses of Parliament were blockaded by the 
Spitalfields weavers. Bedford House was assailed on all sides by 
a furious rabble, and was strongly garrisoned with horse and foot. 
Some people attributed these disturbances to the friends of Bute, 
and some to the friends of Wilkes. But, whatever might be the 
cause, the effect was general insecurity. Under such circum- 
stances the King had no choice. With bitter feelings of mortifica- 
tion, he informed the ministers that he meant to retain them. 

They answered by demanding from him a promise on his royal 
word never more to consult Lord Bute. The promise was given. 
They then demanded something more. Lord Bute's brother, Mr. 
Mackenzie, held a lucrative office in Scotland. Mr. Mackenzie 
must be dismissed. The King replied that the office had been 
given under very peculiar circumstances, and that he had promised 
never to take it away while he lived. Grenville was obstinate ; 
and the King, with a very bad grace, yielded. 

The session of Parliament was over. The triumph of the 
ministers was complete. The King was almost as much a prisoner 
as Charles the First had been when in the Isle of Wight. Such 
were the fruits of the policy which, only a few months before, was 
represented as having forever secured the throne against the 
dictation of insolent subjects. 

His Majesty's natural resentment showed itself in every look 
and word. In his extremity he looked wistfully towards that 

1 Exstinxi: this is the reading in old texts of Virgil. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 59 

Whig connection, once the object of his dread and hatred. The 
Duke of Devonshire, who had been treated with such unjustifiable 
harshness, had lately died, and had been succeeded by his son, 
who was still a boy. The King condescended to express his 
regret for what had passed, and to invite the young Duke to 
court. The noble youth came, attended by his uncles, and was 
received with marked graciousness. 

This and many other symptoms of the same kind irritated the 
ministers. They had still in store for their sovereign an insult 
which would have provoked his grandfather to kick them out of 
the room. Grenville and Bedford demanded an audience of him, 
and read him a remonstrance of many pages, which they had 
drawn up with great care. His Majesty was accused of breaking 
his word, and of treating his advisers with gross unfairness. The 
Princess was mentioned in language by no means eulogistic. 
Hints were thrown out that Bute's head was in danger. The 
King was plainly told that he must not continue to show, as he 
had done, that he disliked the situation in which he was placed, 
that he must frown upon the opposition, that he must carry it fair 
towards his ministers in public. He several times interrupted the 
reading, by declaring that he had ceased to hold any communica- 
tion with Bute. But the ministers, disregarding his denial, went 
on ; and the King listened in silence, almost choked by rage. 
When they ceased to read, he merely made a gesture expressive 
of his wish to be left alone. He afterwards owned that he thought 
he should have gone into a fit. 

Driven to despair, he again had recourse to the Duke of 
Cumberland ; and the Duke of Cumberland again had recourse 
to Pitt. Pitt was really desirous to undertake the direction of 
affairs, and owned, with many dutiful expressions, that the terms 
offered by the King were all that any subject could desire. But 
Temple was impracticable ; and Pitt, with great regret, declared 
that he could not, without the concurrence of his brother-in-law, 
undertake the administration. 

The Duke now saw only one way of delivering his nephew. 
An administration must be formed of the Whigs in opposition, 



60 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

without Pitt's help. The difficulties seemed almost insuperable. 
Death and desertion had grievously thinned the ranks of the 
party lately supreme in the state. Those among whom the Duke's 
choice lay might be divided into two classes, men too old for 
important offices, and men who had never been in any important 
office before. The cabinet must be composed of broken invalids 
or of raw recruits. 

This was an evil, yet not an unmixed evil. If the new Whig 
statesmen had little experience in business and debate, they were, 
on the other hand, pure from that taint of political immorality 
which had deeply infected their predecessors. Long prosperity 
had corrupted that great party which had expelled the Stuarts, 
limited the prerogatives of the Crown, and curbed the intolerance 
of the Hierarchy. Adversity had already produced a salutary 
effect. On the day of the accession of George the Third the 
ascendency of the Whig party terminated ; and on that day the 
purification of the Whig party began. The rising chiefs of that 
party were men of a very different sort from Sandys and Win- 
nington, from Sir William Yonge and Henry Fox. They were 
men worthy to have charged by the side of Hampden at Chal- 
grove, or to have exchanged the last embrace with Russell on the 
scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. They carried into politics the 
same high principles of virtue which regulated their private 
dealings, nor would they stoop to promote even the noblest and 
most salutary ends by means which honor and probity condemn. 
Such men were Lord John Cavendish, Sir George Savile, and 
others whom we hold in honor as the second founders of the 
Whig party, as the restorers of its pristine health and energy' 
after half a century of degeneracy. 

The chief of this respectable band was the Marquess of Rock- 
ingham, a man of splendid fortune, excellent sense, and stainless 
character. He was indeed nervous to such a degree that, to the 
very close of his life, he never rose without great reluctance and 
embarrassment to address the House of Lords. But though not 
a great orator, he had in a high degree some of the qualities of 
a statesman. He chose his friends well, and he had, in an ex- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 61 

traordinary degree, the art of attaching them to him by ties of 
the most honorable kind. The cheerful fidelity with which they 
adhered to him through many years of almost hopeless opposition 
was less admirable than the disinterestedness and delicacy which 
they showed when he rose to power. 

We are inclined to think that the use and the abuse of party 
cannot be better illustrated than by a parallel between two power- 
ful connections of that time, the Rockinghams and the Bedfords. 
The Rockingham party was, in our view, exactly what a party 
should be. It consisted of men bound together by common opin- 
ions, by common public objects, by mutual esteem. That they 
desired to obtain, by honest and constitutional means, the direc- 
tion of affairs they openly avowed. But, though often invited to 
accept the honors and emoluments of office, they steadily refused 
to do so on any conditions inconsistent with their principles. 
The Bedford party, as a party, had, as far as we can discover, no 
principle whatever. Rigby and Sandwich wanted public money, 
and thought that they should fetch a higher price jointly than 
singly. They therefore acted in concert, and prevailed on a much 
more important and a much better man than themselves to act 
with them. 

It was to Rockingham that the Duke of Cumberland now had 
recourse. The Marquess consented to take the treasury. New- 
castle, so long the recognized chief of the Whigs, could not well 
be excluded from the ministry. He was appointed Keeper of the 
Privy Seal. A very honest, clear-headed country gentleman, of the 
name of Dowdeswell, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gen- 
eral Conway, who had served under the Duke of Cumberland, and 
was strongly attached to his Royal Highness, was made Secretary 
of State, with the lead in the House of Commons. A great Whig 
nobleman, in the prime of manhood, from whom much was at that 
time expected, Augustus, Duke of Grafton, was the other Secretary. 

The oldest man living could remember no government so weak 
in oratorical talents and in official experience. The general opin- 
ion was, that the ministers might hold office during the recess, but 
that the first day of debate in Parliament would be the last day of 



62 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

their power. Charles Townshend was asked what he thought of 
the new administration. " It is," said he, " mere lutestring ; 
pretty summer wear. It will never do for the winter." 

At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom to dis- 
cern the value, and secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence 
surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and to industry which shamed 
the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension 
to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim. A young 
Irishman had, some time before, come over to push his fortune in 
London. He had written much for the booksellers ; but he was 
best known by a little treatise, in which the style and reasoning of 
Bolingbroke were mimicked with exquisite skill, and by a theory, 
of more ingenuity than soundness, touching the pleasures which 
we receive from the objects of taste. He had also attained a high 
reputation as a talker, and was regarded by the men of letters who 
supped together at the Turk's Head as the only match in con- 
versation for Dr. Johnson. He now became private secretary to 
Lord Rockingham, and was brought into Parliament by his patron's 
influence. These arrangements, indeed, were not made without 
some difficulty. The Duke of Newcastle, who was always med- 
dling and chattering, adjured the First Lord of the Treasury to be 
on his guard against this adventurer, whose real name was O'Bourke, 
and whom his grace knew to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a 
Papist, a concealed Jesuit. Lord Rockingham treated the calumny 
as it deserved ; and the Whig party was strengthened and adorned 
by the accession of Edmund Burke. 

The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions ; for it sustained 
about this time an almost irreparable loss. The Duke of Cumber- 
land had formed the government, and was its main support. His 
exalted rank and great name in some degree balanced the fame 
of Pitt. As mediator between the Whigs and the court, he held 
a place which no other person could fill. The strength of his 
character supplied that which was the chief defect in the new 
ministry. Conway, in particular, who, with excellent intentions 
and respectable talents, was the most dependent and irresolute of 
human beings, drew from the counsels of that masculine mind a 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 63 

determination not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament the 
Duke suddenly died. His death was generally regarded as the 
signal of great troubles, and on this account, as well as from respect 
for his personal qualities, was greatly lamented. It was remarked 
that the mourning in London was the most general ever known, 
and was both deeper and longer than the Gazette x had prescribed. 

In the mean time, every mail from America brought alarming 
tidings. The crop which Grenville had sown, his successors had 
now to reap. The colonies were in a state bordering on rebel- 
lion. The stamps were burned. The revenue officers were tarred 
and feathered. All traffic between the discontented provinces 
and the mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of Lon- 
don was in dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and Liverpool were 
threatened with bankruptcy. In Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, 
it was said that three artisans out of every ten had been turned 
adrift. Civil war seemed to be at hand ; and it could not be 
doubted that, if once the British nation were divided against itself, 
France and Spain would soon take part in the quarrel. 

Three courses were open to the ministers. The first was to 
enforce the Stamp Act by the sword. This was the course on 
which the King and Grenville, whom the King hated beyond all 
living men, were alike bent. The natures of both were arbitrary 
and stubborn. They resembled each other so much that they 
could never be friends ; but they resembled each other also so 
much that they saw almost all important practical questions in the 
same point of view. Neither of them would bear to be governed 
by the other ; but they were perfectly agreed as to the best way 
of governing the people. 

Another course was that which Pitt recommended. He held 
that the British Parliament was not constitutionally competent 
to pass a law for taxing the colonies. He therefore considered 
the Stamp Act as a nullity, as a document of no more validity 
than Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation dis- 
pensing with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must 
own, to be altogether untenable. 

1 Gazette : The London Gazette, the official organ of the court. 



64 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

Between these extreme courses lay a third way. The opinion of 
the most judicious and temperate statesmen of those times was 
that the British constitution had set no limit whatever to the leg- 
islative power of the British King, Lords, and Commons, over 
the whole British Empire. Parliament, they held, was legally 
competent to tax America, as Parliament was legally competent 
to commit any other act of folly or wickedness, to confiscate the 
property of all the merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint any 
man in the kingdom of high treason, without examining witnesses 
against him, or hearing him in his own defence. The most atro- 
cious act of confiscation or of attainder is just as valid an act as 
the Toleration Act or the Habeas Corpus Act. But from acts of 
confiscation and acts of attainder law-givers are bound, by every 
obligation of morality, systematically to refrain. In the same 
manner ought the British legislature to refrain from taxing the 
American colonies. The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because 
it was beyond the constitutional competence of Parliament, but 
because it was unjust and unpolitic, sterile of revenues, and fertile 
of discontents. These sound doctrines were adopted by Lord 
Rockingham and his colleagues, and were, during a long course of 
years, inculcated by Burke, in orations, some of which will last 
as long as the English language. 

The winter came ; the Parliament met ; and the state of the 
colonies instantly became the subject of fierce contention. Pitt, 
whose health had been somewhat restored by the waters of Bath, 
reappeared in the House of Commons, and, with ardent and 
pathetic eloquence, not only condemned the Stamp Act, but 
applauded the resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia, and vehe- 
mently maintained, in defiance, we must say, of all reason and 
of all authority, that, according to the British constitution, the 
supreme legislative power does not include the power to tax. 
The language of Grenville, on the other hand, was such as Straf- 
ford might have used at the council table of Charles the First, 
when news came of the resistance to the liturgy at Edinburgh. 
The colonists were traitors ; those who excused them were little 
better. Frigates, mortars, bayonets, sabres, were the proper rem- 
edies for such distempers. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 65 

The ministers occupied an intermediate position ; they proposed 
to declare that the legislative authority of the British Parliament 
over the whole empire was in all cases supreme ; and they pro- 
posed, at the same time, to repeal the Stamp Act. To the former 
measure Pitt objected ; but it was carried with scarcely a dissen- 
tient voice. The repeal of the Stamp Act Pitt strongly supported ; 
but against the government was arrayed a formidable assemblage 
of opponents. Grenville and the Bedfords were furious. Tem- 
ple, who had now allied himself closely with his brother, and 
separated himself from Pitt, was no despicable enemy. This, 
however, was not the worst. The ministry was without its natural 
strength. It had to struggle, not only against its avowed enemies, 
but against the insidious hostility of the King, and of a set of per- 
sons who, about this time, began to be designated as the King's 
friends. 

The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with 
even more than his usual force and vivacity. Those who know 
how strongly, through his whole life, his judgment was biassed by 
his passions, may not unnaturally suspect that he has left us rather 
a caricature than a likeness ; and yet there is scarcely, in the 
whole portrait, a single touch of which the fidelity is not proved 
by facts of unquestionable authenticity. 

The public generally regarded the King's friends as a body of 
which Bute was the directing soul. It was to no purpose that the 
Earl professed to have done with politics, that he absented himself 
year after year from the levee and the drawing-room, that he 
went to the north, that he went to Rome. The notion that, in 
some inexplicable manner, he dictated all the measures of the 
court, was fixed in the minds, not only of the multitude, but of 
some who had good opportunities of obtaining information, and 
who ought to have been superior to vulgar prejudices. Our own 
belief is that these suspicions were unfounded, and that he ceased 
to have any communication with the King on political matters 
some time before the dismissal of George Grenville. The sup- 
position of Bute's influence is, indeed, by no means necessary to 
explain the phenomena. The King, in 1765, was no longer the 



66 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

ignorant and inexperienced boy who had, in 1760, been managed 
by his mother and his Groom of the Stole. He had, during 
several years, observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily 
on high questions of state with able and experienced politicians. 
His way of life had developed his understanding and character. 
He was now no longer a puppet, but had very decided opinions 
both of men and things. Nothing could be more natural than that 
he should have high notions of his own prerogatives, should be 
impatient of opposition, and should wish all public men to be 
detached from each other and dependent on himself alone ; nor 
could anything be more natural than that, in the state in which the 
political world then was, he should find instruments fit for his 
purposes. 

Thus sprang into existence and into note a reptile species of 
politicians never before and never since known in our country. 
These men disclaimed all political ties, except those which bound 
them to the throne. They were willing to coalesce with any 
party, to abandon any party, to undermine any party, to assault 
any party at a moment's notice. To them, all administrations, 
and all oppositions were the same. They regarded Bute, Gren- 
ville, Rockingham, Pitt, without one sentiment either of predi- 
lection or of aversion. They were the King's friends. It is to be 
observed that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These 
people had never lived with their master as Dodington at one 
time lived with his father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived with his 
son. They never hunted with him in the morning, or played cards 
with him in the evening, never shared his mutton or walked with 
him among his turnips. Only one or two of them ever saw his 
face except on public days. The whole band, however, always 
had early and accurate information as to his personal inclinations. 
These people were never high in the administration. They were 
generally to be found in places of much emolument, little labor 
and no responsibility ; and these places they continued to occupy 
securely while the cabinet was six or seven times reconstructed. 
Their peculiar business was not to support the ministry against the 
opposition, but to support the King against the ministry. When- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 67 

ever his Majesty was induced to give a reluctant assent to 
the introduction of some bill which his constitutional advisers re- 
garded as necessary, his friends in the House of Commons were 
sure to speak against it, to vote against it, to throw in its way every 
obstruction compatible with the forms of Parliament. If his 
Majesty found it necessary to admit into his closet a Secretary of 
State or a First Lord of the Treasury whom he disliked, his friends 
were sure to miss no opportunity of thwarting and humbling the 
obnoxious minister. In return for these services, the King covered 
them with his protection. It was to no purpose that his respon- 
sible servants complained to him that they were daily betrayed and 
impeded by men who were eating the bread of the government. 
He sometimes justified the offenders, sometimes excused them, 
sometimes owned that they were to blame, but said that he must 
take time to consider whether he would part with them. He 
never would turn them out; and, while everything else in the 
state was constantly changing, these sycophants seemed to have 
a life estate in their offices. 

It was well known to the King's friends that, though his Majesty 
had consented to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he had consented 
with a very bad grace, and that though he had eagerly welcomed 
the Whigs, when, in his extreme need and at his earnest entreaty, 
they had undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he had 
by no means got over his early prejudices against his deliverers. 
The ministers soon found that, while they were encountered in 
front by the whole force of a strong opposition, their rear was 
assailed by a large body of those whom they had regarded as 
auxiliaries. 

Nevertheless, Lord Rockingham and his adherents went on 
resolutely with the bill for repealing the Stamp Act. They had on 
their side all the manufacturing and commercial interests of the 
realm. In the debates the government was powerfully supported. 
Two great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different gener- 
ations, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defence of the bill. 
The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke 
for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the palm of 



68 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

eloquence should be assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset 
and a splendid dawn. 

For a time the event seemed doubtful. In several divisions the 
ministers were hard pressed. On one occasion, not less than 
twelve of the King's friends, all men in office, voted against the 
government. It was to no purpose that Lord Rockingham 
remonstrated with the King. His Majesty confessed that there 
was ground for complaint, but hoped that gentle means would 
bring the mutineers to a better mind. If they persisted in their 
misconduct, he would dismiss them. 

At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the lobby, the 
Court of Requests, the staircases, were crowded with merchants 
from all the great ports of the island. The debate lasted till long 
after midnight. On the division the ministers had a great 
majority. The dread of civil war, and the outcry of all the 
trading towns of the kingdom, had been too strong for the com- 
bined strength of the court and the opposition. 

It was in the first dim twilight of a February morning that the 
doors were thrown open, and that the chiefs of the hostile parties 
showed themselves to the multitude. Conway was received with 
loud applause. But when Pitt appeared, all eyes were fixed on 
him alone. All hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas 
accompanied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted 
him all the way to his home. Then came forth Grenville. As 
soon as he was recognized, a storm of hisses and curses broke 
forth. He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one man by 
the throat. The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle 
began, none could say how it might end. Fortunately the person 
who had been collared only said, " If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I 
may laugh," and laughed in Grenville's face. 

The majority had been so decisive, that all the opponents of 
the ministry, save one, were disposed to let the bill pass without 
any further contention. But solicitation and expostulation were 
thrown away on Grenville. His indomitable spirit rose up stronger 
and stronger under the load of public hatred. He fought out the 
battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he had a sharp 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 69 

altercation with his brother-in-law, the last of their many sharp 
altercations. Pitt thundered in his loftiest tones against the man 
who had wished to dip the ermine of a British King in the blood 
of the British people. Grenville replied with his wonted intre- 
pidity and asperity. " If the tax," he said, " were still to be laid 
on, I would lay it on. For the evils which it may produce, my 
accuser is answerable. His profusion made it necessary. His 
declarations against the constitutional powers of the Kings, Lords, 
and Commons have made it doubly necessary. I do not envy 
him the huzza. I glory in the hiss. If it were to be done again, 
I would do it." 

The repeal of the Stamp Act was the chief measure of Lord 
Rockingham's government. But that government is entitled to 
the praise of having put a stop to two oppressive practices, which 
in Wilkes's case, had attracted the notice and excited the just 
indignation of the public. The House of Commons was induced 
by the ministers to pass a resolution condemning the use of 
general warrants, 1 and another resolution condemning the seizure 
of papers in cases of libel. 

It must be added, to the lasting honor of Lord Rockingham, 
that his administration was the first, which, during a long course 
of years, had the courage and the virtue to refrain from bribing 
members of Parliament. His enemies accused him and his friends 
of weakness, of haughtiness, of party spirit ; but calumny itself 
never dared to couple his name with corruption. 

Unhappily, his government, though one of the best that has ever 
existed in our country, was also one of the weakest. The King's 
friends assailed and obstructed the ministers at every turn. To 
appeal to the King was only to draw forth new promises and new 
evasions. His Majesty was sure that there must be some mis- 
understanding. Lord Rockingham had better speak to the gentle- 

1 General "Warrants : warrants issued in blank, and which enabled an officer 
to arrest any person he saw fit, without specific charge against him. Wilkes was 
arrested on one of these general warrants (later declared illegal). The use of 
them in America was vehemently denounced by Otis, and was one cause of the 
Revolution. 



70 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

men. They should be dismissed on the next fault. The next 
fault was soon committed, and his Majesty still continued to 
shuffle. It was too bad. It was quite abominable ; but it mat- 
tered less as the prorogation was at hand. He would give the 
delinquents one more chance. If they did not alter their con- 
duct next session, he should not have one word to say for them. 
He had already resolved that, long before the commencement of 
the next session, Lord Rockingham should cease to be minister. 

We have now come to a part of our story which, admiring as 
we do the genius and the many noble qualities of Pitt, we cannot 
relate without much pain. We believe that, at this conjuncture, 
he had it in his power to give the victory either to the Whigs or 
to the King's friends. If he had allied himself closely with Lord 
Rockingham, what could the court have done ? There would have 
been only one alternative, the Whigs or Grenville ; and there 
could be no doubt what the King's choice would be. He still 
remembered, as well he might, with the uttermost bitterness, the 
thraldom from which his uncle had freed him, and said about this 
time, with great vehemence, that he would sooner see the devil 
come into his closet than Grenville. 

And what was there to prevent Pitt from allying himself with 
Lord Rockingham? On all the most important questions their 
views were the same. They had agreed in condemning the peace, 
the Stamp Act, the general warrant, the seizure of papers. The 
points on which they differed were few and unimportant. In 
integrity, in disinterestedness, in hatred of corruption, they resem- 
bled each other. Their personal interests could not clash. They 
sat in different Houses, and Pitt had always declared that nothing 
should induce him to be First Lord of the Treasury. 

If the opportunity of forming a coalition beneficial to the state, 
and honorable to all concerned, was suffered to escape, the fault 
was not with the Whig ministers. They behaved towards Pitt 
with an obsequiousness which, had it not been the effect of sincere 
admiration and of anxiety for the public interests, might have been 
justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to understand 
that, if he chose to join the ranks, they were ready to receive him, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 71 

not as an associate, but as a leader. They had proved their 
respect for him by bestowing a peerage on the person who, at 
that time, enjoyed the largest share of his confidence, Chief Jus- 
tice Pratt. What then was there to divide Pitt from the Whigs? 
What, on the other hand, was there in common between him and 
the King's friends, that he should lend himself to their purposes, 
he who had never owed anything to flattery or intrigue, he whose 
eloquence and independent spirit had overawed two generations 
of slaves and jobbers, he who had twice been forced by the 
enthusiasm of an unadmiring nation on a reluctant Prince ? 

Unhappily the court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, by those 
ignoble means which were employed when such men as Rigby and 
Wedderburn were to be won, but by allurements suited to a nature 
noble even in its aberrations. The King set himself to seduce the 
one man who could turn the Whigs out without letting Grenville 
in. Praise, caresses, promises, were lavished on the idol of the 
nation. He, and he alone, could put an end to faction, could bid 
defiance to all the powerful connections in the land united, Whigs 
and Tories, Rockinghams, Bedfords, and Grenvilles. These blan- 
dishments produced a great effect. For though Pitt's spirit was 
high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted with 
formidable effect against the court, and though his theory of 
government had been learned in the school of Locke and Sydney, 
he had always regarded the person of the sovereign with profound 
veneration. As soon as he was brought face to face with royalty, 
his imagination and sensibility were too strong for his principles. 
His Whiggism thawed and disappeared ; and he became, for the 
time, a Tory of the old Ormond pattern. Nor was he *by any 
means unwilling to assist in the work of dissolving all political con- 
nections. His own weight in the state was wholly independent of 
such connections. He was therefore inclined to look on them 
with dislike, and made far too little distinction between gangs of 
knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and 
confederacies of honorable men for the promotion of great public 
objects. Nor had he the sagacity to perceive that the strenuous 
efforts which he made to annihilate .all parties tended only to 



72 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

establish the ascendency of one party, and that the basest and 
most hateful of all. 

It may be doubted whether he would have been thus misled, if 
his mind had been in full health and vigor. But the truth is that 
he had for some time been in an unnatural state of excitement. 
No suspicion of this sort had yet got abroad. His eloquence had 
never shone with more splendor than during the recent debates. 
But people afterwards called to mind many things which ought to 
have roused their apprehensions. His habits were gradually 
becoming more and more eccentric. A horror of all loud sounds, 
such as is said to have been one of the many oddities of Wallen- 
stein, grew upon him. Though the most affectionate of fathers, he 
could not at this time bear to hear the voices of his own children, 
and laid out great sums at Hayes in buying up houses contiguous 
to his own, merely that he might have no neighbors to disturb him 
with their noise. He then sold Hayes, and took possession of a 
villa at Hampstead, where he again began to purchase houses to 
right and left. In expense, indeed, he vied, during this part of 
his life, with the wealthiest of the conquerors of Bengal and 
Tanjore. At Burton Pynsent, he ordered a great extent of ground 
to be planted with cedars. Cedars enough for the purpose were 
not to be found in Somersetshire. They were therefore collected 
in London, and sent down by land carriage. Relays of laborers 
were hired ; and the work went on all night by torchlight. No 
man could be more abstemious than Pitt ; yet the profusion of his 
kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. Several dinners were 
always dressing ; for his appetite was capricious and fanciful ; and 
at whatever moment he felt inclined to eat, he expected a meal to 
be instantly on the table. Other circumstances might be men- 
tioned, such as separately are of little moment, but such as, when 
taken together, and when viewed in connection with the strange 
events which followed, justify us in believing that his mind was 
already in a morbid state. 

Soon after the close of the session of Parliament, Lord Rock- 
ingham received his dismissal. He retired, accompanied by a 
firm body of friends, whose consistency and uprightness enmity 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 73 

itself was forced to admit. None of them had asked or obtained 
any pension or any sinecure, either in possession or in reversion. 
Such disinterestedness was then rare among politicians. Their 
chief, though not a man of brilliant talents, had won for himself 
an honorable fame, which he kept pure to the last. He had, in 
spite of difficulties which seemed almost insurmountable, removed 
great abuses and averted a civil war. Sixteen years later, in a 
dark and terrible day, he was again called upon to save the state, 
brought to the very brink of ruin by the same perfidy and ob- 
stinacy which had embarrassed, and at length overthrown, his 
first administration. 

Pitt was planting in Somersetshire when he was summoned to 
court by a letter written by the royal hand. He instantly hastened 
to London. The irritability of his mind and body were increased 
by the rapidity with which he travelled ; and when he reached 
his journey's end he was suffering from fever. Ill as he was, he 
saw the King at Richmond, and undertook to form an adminis- 
tration. 

Pitt was scarcely in the state in which a man should be who 
has to conduct delicate and arduous negotiations. In his letters 
to his wife, he complained that the conferences in which it was 
necessary for him to bear a part heated his blood and accelerated 
his pulse. From other sources of information we learn that his 
language, even to those whose co-operation he wished to engage, 
was strangely peremptory and despotic. Some of his notes writ- 
ten at this time have been preserved, and are in a style which 
Lewis the Fourteenth would have been too well bred to employ 
in addressing any French gentleman. 

In the attempt to dissolve all parties, Pitt met with some diffi- 
culties. Some Whigs, whom the court would gladly have detached 
from Lord Rockingham, rejected all offers. The Bedfords were 
perfectly willing to break with Grenville ; but Pitt would not 
come up to their terms. Temple, whom Pitt at first meant to place 
at the head of the treasury, proved intractable. A coldness 
indeed had, during some months, been fast growing between the 
brothers-in-law, so long and so closely allied in politics. Pitt was 



74 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

angry with Temple for opposing the repeal of the Stamp Act. 
Temple was angry with Pitt for refusing to accede to that family 
league which was now the favorite plan at Stowe. At length the 
Earl proposed an equal partition of power and patronage, and 
offered, on this condition, to give up his brother George. Pitt 
thought the demand exorbitant, and positively refused compliance. 
A bitter quarrel followed. Each of the kinsmen was true to 
his character. Temple's soul festered with spite, and Pitt's 
swelled into contempt. Temple represented Pitt as the most 
odious of hypocrites and traitors. Pitt held a different and per- 
haps a more provoking tone. Temple was a good sort of a man 
enough, whose single title to distinction was, that he had a large 
garden, with a large piece of water, and a great many pavilions 
and summer-houses. To his fortunate connection with a great 
orator and statesman he was indebted for an importance in the 
state which his own talents could never have gained for him. 
That importance had turned his head. He had begun to fancy 
that he could form administrations, and govern empires. It was 
piteous to see a well-meaning man under such a delusion. 

In spite of all these difficulties, a ministry was made such as 
the King wished to see, a ministry in which all his Majesty's 
friends were comfortably accommodated, and which, with the 
exception of his Majesty's friends, contained no four persons 
who had ever in their lives been in the habit of acting together. 
Men who had never concurred in a single vote found themselves 
seated at the same board. The office of paymaster was divided 
between two persons who had never exchanged a word. Most 
of the chief posts were filled either by personal adherents of Pitt, 
or by members of the late ministry, who had been induced to 
remain in place after the dismissal of Lord Rockingham. To the 
former class belonged Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted 
the great seal, and Lord Shelburne, who was made one of the 
Secretaries of State. To the latter class belonged the Duke of 
Grafton, who became First Lord of the Treasury, and Conway, 
who kept his old position both in the government and in the 
House of Commons. Charles Townshend, who had belonged to 



THE EARL OE CHATHAM. 75 

every party, and cared for none, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
Pitt himself was declared prime minister, but refused to take any 
laborious office. He was created Earl of Chatham, and the privy 
seal was delivered to him. 

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failure, the complete 
and disgraceful failure, of this arrangement, is not to be ascribed 
to any want of capacity in the persons whom we have named. 
None of them was deficient in abilities ; and four of them, Pitt 
himself, Shelburne, Camden, and Townshend, were men of high 
intellectual eminence. The fault was not in the materials, but in 
the principle on which the materials were put together. Pitt had 
mixed up these conflicting elements, in the full confidence that 
he should be able to keep them all in perfect subordination ta 
himself, and in perfect harmony with each other. We shall soon 
see how the experiment succeeded. 

On the very day on which the new Prime Minister kissed 
hands, 1 three-fourths of that popularity which he had long en- 
joyed without a rival, and to which he owed the greater part of 
his authority, departed from him. A violent outcry was raised, 
not against that part of his conduct which really deserved severe 
condemnation, but against a step in which we can see nothing to 
censure. His acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst 
of indignation. Yet surely no peerage had been better earned ; 
nor was there ever a statesman who more needed the repose of 
the Upper House. Pitt was now growing old. He was much 
older in constitution than in years. It was with imminent risk to 
his life that he had, on some important occasions, attended his 
duty in Parliament. During the session of 1764, he had not 
been able to take part in a single debate. It was impossible that 
he should go through the nightly labor of conducting the business 
of the government in the House of Commons. His wish to be 
transferred, under such circumstances, to a less busy and less 
turbulent assembly, was natural and reasonable. The nation, 
however, overlooked all these considerations. Those who had 

1 Kissed hands : when the Prime Minister takes office he kisses the sovereign's 
hands. 



76 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

most loved and honored ' the great Commoner were loudest in 
invective against the new-made Lord. London had hitherto been 
true to him through every vicissitude. When the citizens learned 
that he had been sent for from Somersetshire, that he had been 
closeted with the King at Richmond, and that he was to be first 
minister, they had been in transports of joy. Preparations were 
made for a grand entertainment and for a general illumination. 
The lamps had actually been placed round the monument, when 
the Gazette announced that the object of all this enthusiasm was 
an Earl. Instantly the feast was countermanded. The lamps 
were taken down. The newspapers raised the roar of obloquy. 
Pamphlets, made up of calumny and scurrility, filled the shops 
of all the booksellers ; and of those pamphlets, the most galling 
were written under the direction of the malignant Temple. It 
was now the fashion to compare the two Williams, William 
Pulteney and William Pitt. Both, it was said, had, by eloquence 
and simulated patriotism, acquired a great ascendency in the 
House of Commons and in the country. Both had been intrusted 
with the office of reforming the government. Both had, when at 
the height of power and popularity, been seduced by the splendor 
of the coronet. Both had been made earls, and both had at once 
become objects of aversion and scorn to the nation which a few 
hours before had regarded them with affection and veneration. 

The clamor against Pitt appears to have had a serious effect on 
the foreign relations of the country. His name had till now acted 
like a spell at Versailles and Saint Ildefonso. 1 English travellers 
on the Continent had remarked that nothing more was necessary 
to silence a whole room full of boasting Frenchmen than to drop 
a hint of the probability that Mr. Pitt would return to power. In 
an instant there was deep silence : all shoulders rose, and all 
faces were lengthened. Now, unhappily, every foreign court, in 
learning that he was recalled to office, learned also that he no 
longer possessed the hearts of his countrymen. Ceasing to be 
loved at home, he ceased to be feared abroad. The name of 

1 Versailles and Saint Ildefonso : the French and the Spanish courts. Saint 
Ildefonso, near Madrid, is the Versailles of Spain. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 77 

Pitt had been a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to 
conjure with the name of Chatham. 

The difficulties which beset Chatham were daily increased by 
the despotic manner in which he treated all around him. Lord 
Rockingham had, at the time of the change of ministry, acted 
with great moderation ; had expressed a hope that the new govern- 
ment would act on the principles of the late government ; and had 
even interfered to prevent many of his friends from quitting office. 
Thus Saunders and Keppel, two naval commanders of great emi- 
nence, had been induced to remain at the Admiralty, where their 
services were much needed. The Duke of Portland was still 
Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Besborough Postmaster. But within 
a quarter of a year, Lord Chatham had so deeply affronted these 
men, that they all retired in disgust. In truth, his tone, submis- 
sive in the closet, was at this time insupportably tyrannical in the 
cabinet. His colleagues were merely his clerks for naval, finan- 
cial, and diplomatic business. Conway, meek as he was, was on 
one occasion provoked into declaring that such language as Lord 
Chatham's had never been heard west of Constantinople, and was 
with difficulty prevented by Horace Walpole from resigning, and 
rejoining the standard of Lord Rockingham. 

The breach which had been made in the government by the 
defection of so many of the Rockinghams, Chatham hoped to 
supply by the help of the Bedfords. But with the Bedfords he 
could not deal as he had dealt with the other parties. It was to 
no purpose that he bade high for one or two members of the 
faction, in the hope of detaching them from the rest. They were 
to be had ; but they were to be had only in the lot. There was 
indeed for a moment some wavering and some disputing among 
them. But at length the counsels of the shrewd and resolute 
Rigby prevailed. They determined to stand firmly together, and 
plainly intimated to Chatham that he must take them all, or that 
he should get none of them. The event proved that they were 
wiser in their generation than any other connection in the state. 
In a few months they were able to dictate their own terms. 

The most important public measure of Lord Chatham's admin- 



78 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

istration was his celebrated interference with the corn trade. The 
harvest had been bad; the price of food was high; and he 
thought it necessary to take on himself the responsibility of laying 
an embargo on the exportation of grain. When Parliament met, 
this proceeding was attacked by the opposition as unconstitutional, 
and defended by the ministers as indispensably necessary. At 
last an act was passed to indemnify all who had been concerned 
in the embargo. 

The first words uttered by Chatham, in the House of Lords, 
were in defence of his conduct on this occasion. He spoke with 
a calmness, sobriety, and dignity, well suited to the audience which 
he was addressing. A subsequent speech which he made on the 
same subject was less successful. He bade defiance to aristocrat- 
ical connections, with a superciliousness to which the Peers were 
not accustomed, and with tones and gestures better suited to a 
large and stormy assembly than to the body of which he was now 
a member. A short altercation followed, and he was told very 
plainly that he should not be suffered to browbeat the old nobility 
of England. 

It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in a dis- 
tempered state of mind. His attention had been drawn to the 
territorial acquisitions of the East India Company, and he deter- 
mined to bring the whole of that great subject before Parliament. 
He would not, however, confer on the subject with any of his col- 
leagues. It was in vain that Conway, who was charged with the 
conduct of business in the House of Commons, and Charles 
Townshend, who was responsible for the direction of the finances, 
begged for some glimpse of light as to what was in contemplation. 
Chatham's answers were sullen and mysterious. He must decline 
any discussion with them ; he did not want their assistance ; he 
had fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in the House 
of Commons. This person was a member who was not connected 
with the government, and who neither had, or deserved to have, 
the ear of the House, a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue, 
whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were 
the jest of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 79 

supposed that these strange proceedings produced ferment through 
the whole political world. The city was in commotion. The 
East India Company invoked the faith of charters. Burke thun- 
dered against the ministers. The ministers looked at each other, 
and knew not what to say. In the midst of the confusion, Lord 
Chatham proclaimed himself gouty, and retired to Bath. It was 
announced, after some time, that he was better, that he would 
shortly return, that he would soon put everything in order. A day 
was fixed for his arrival in London. But when he reached the 
Castle inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up in his 
room, and remained there some weeks. Everybody who travelled 
that road was amazed by the number of his attendants. Footmen 
and grooms, dressed in his family livery, filled the whole inn, 
though one of the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets 
of the little town. The truth was, that the invalid had insisted 
that, during his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle 
should wear his livery. 

His colleagues were in despair. The Duke of Grafton proposed 
to go down to Marlborough in order to consult the oracle. But 
he was informed that Lord Chatham must decline all conversation 
on business. In the mean time, all the parties which were out of 
office, Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Rockinghams, joined to oppose 
the distracted government on the vote for the land tax. They 
were reinforced by almost all the county members, and had a con- 
siderable majority. This was the first time that a ministry had 
been beaten on an important division in the House of Commons 
since the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. The administration, thus 
furiously assailed from without, was torn by internal dissensions. 
It had been formed on no principle whatever. From the very 
first, nothing but Chatham's authority had prevented the hostile 
contingents which made up his ranks from going to blows with 
each other. That authority was now withdrawn, and everything 
was in commotion. Conway, a brave soldier, but in civil affairs 
the most timid and irresolute of men, afraid of disobliging the 
King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid of being 
thought factious if he went out, afraid of being thought interested 



80 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

if he staid in, afraid of everything, and afraid of being known to 
be afraid of anything, was beaten backwards and forwards like a 
shuttlecock between Horace Walpole who wished to make him 
Prime Minister, and Lord John Cavendish who wished to draw him 
into opposition. Charles Townshend, a man of splendid elo- 
quence, of lax principles, and of boundless vanity and presump- 
tion, would submit to no control. The full extent of his parts, of 
his ambition, and of his arrogance, had not yet been made mani- 
fest; for he had always quailed before the genius and the lofty 
character of Pitt. But now that Pitt had quitted the House of 
Commons, and seemed to have abdicated the part of chief min- 
ister, Townshend broke loose from all restraint. 

While things were in this state, Chatham at length returned to 
London. He might as well have remained at Marlborough. He 
would see nobody. He would give no opinion on any public 
matter. The Duke of Grafton begged piteously for an interview, 
for an hour, for half an hour, for five minutes. The answer was, 
that it was impossible. The King himself repeatedly conde- 
scended to expostulate and implore. "Your duty," he wrote, 
" your own honor, require you to make an effort." The answers 
to these appeals were commonly written in Lady Chatham's hand, 
from her Lord's dictation ; for he had not energy even to use a 
pen. He flings himself at the King's feet. He is penetrated by 
the royal goodness so signally shown to the most unhappy of men. 
He implores a little more indulgence. He cannot as yet transact 
business. He cannot see his colleagues. Least of all can he bear 
the excitement of an interview with majesty. 

Some were half inclined to suspect that he was, to use a military 
phrase, malingering. He had made, they said, a great blunder, 
and found it out. His immense popularity, his high reputation 
for statesmanship, were gone forever. Intoxicated by pride, he 
had undertaken a task beyond his abilities. He now saw nothing 
before him but distresses and humiliations ; and he had therefore 
simulated illness, in order to escape from vexations which he had 
not fortitude to meet. This suspicion, though it derived some 
color from that weakness which was the most striking blemish of 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 81 

his character, was certainly unfounded. His mind, before he 
became first minister, had been, as we have said, in an unsound 
state : and physical and moral causes now concurred to make the 
derangement of his faculties complete. The gout, which had been 
the torment of his whole life, had been suppressed by strong rem- 
edies. For the first time since he was a boy at Oxford, he had 
passed several months without a twinge. But his hand and foot 
had been relieved at the expense of his nerves. He became mel- 
ancholy, fanciful, irritable. The embarrassing state of public 
affairs, the grave responsibility which lay on him, the conscious- 
ness of his errors, the disputes of his colleagues, the savage clam- 
ors raised by his detractors, bewildered his enfeebled mind. One 
thing alone, he said, could save him. He must repurchase Hayes. 
The unwilling consent of the new occupant was extorted by Lady 
Chatham's entreaties and tears; and her Lord was somewhat 
easier. But if business were mentioned to him, he, once the 
proudest and boldest of mankind, behaved like an hysterical girl, 
trembled from head to foot, and burst into a flood of tears. 

His colleagues for a time continued -to entertain the expecta- 
tion that his health would soon be restored, and that he would 
emerge from his retirement. But month followed month, and still 
he remained hidden in mysterious seclusion, and sunk, as far as 
they could learn, in the deepest dejection of spirits. They at 
length ceased to hope or to fear, anything from him ; and though 
he was still nominally Prime Minister, took without scruple steps 
which they knew to be diametrically opposed to all his opinions 
and feelings, allied themselves with those whom he had proscribed, 
disgraced those whom he most esteemed, and laid taxes on the 
colonies, in the face of the strong declarations which he had 
recently made. 

When he had passed about a year and three quarters in gloomy 
privacy, the King received a few lines in Lady Chatham's hand. 
They contained a request, dictated by her lord, that he might be 
permitted to resign the privy seal. After some civil show of 
reluctance, the resignation was accepted. Indeed Chatham was, 
by this time, almost as much forgotten as if he had already been 
lying in Westminster Abbey. 



82 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

At length the clouds which had gathered over his mind broke 
and passed away. His gout returned, and freed him from a more 
cruel malady. His nerves were newly braced. His spirits be- 
came buoyant. He woke as from a sickly dream. It was a 
strange recovery. Men had been in the habit of talking of him 
as of one dead, and, when first he showed himself at the King's 
levee, started as if they had seen a ghost. It was more than two 
years and a half since he had appeared in public. 

He, too, had cause for wonder. The world which he now en- 
tered was not the world which he had quitted. The administra- 
tion which he had formed had never been, at any one moment, 
entirely changed. But there had been so many losses and so 
many accessions, that he could scarcely recognize his own work. 
Charles Townshend was dead. Lord Shelburne had been dis- 
missed. Conway had sunk into utter insignificance. The Duke 
of Grafton had fallen into the hands of the Bedfords. The Bed- 
fords had de.serted Grenville, had made their peace with the 
King, and the King's friends, and had been admitted to office. 
Lord North was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was rising fast 
in importance. Corsica had been given up to France without a 
struggle. The disputes with the American colonies had been 
revived. A general election had taken place. Wilkes had re- 
turned from exile, and, outlaw as he was, had been chosen knight 
of the shire for Middlesex. The multitude was on his side. The 
court was obstinately bent on ruining him, and was prepared to 
shake the very foundations of the constitution for the sake of a 
paltry revenge. The House of Commons, assuming to itself an 
authority which of right belongs only to the whole legislature, 
had declared Wilkes incapable of sitting in Parliament. Nor had 
it been thought sufficient to keep him out. Another must be 
brought in. Since the freeholders of Middlesex had obstinately 
refused to choose a member acceptable to the court, the House 
had chosen a member for them. This was not the only instance, 
perhaps not the most disgraceful instance, of the inveterate malig- 
nity of the court. Exasperated by the steady opposition of the 
Rockingham party, the King's friends had tried to rob a distin- 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 83 

guished Whig nobleman of his private estate, and had persisted 
in their mean wickedness till their own servile majority had re- 
volted from mere disgust and shame. Discontent had spread 
throughout the nation, and was kept up by stimulants such as 
had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius 1 had taken 
the field, had trampled Sir William Draper in the dust, had well 
nigh broken the heart of Blackstone, and had so mangled the 
reputation of the Duke of Grafton, that his grace had become sick 
of office, and was beginning to look wistfully towards the shades 
of Euston. Every principle of foreign, domestic, and colonial 
policy which was dear to the heart of Chatham, had, during the 
eclipse of his genius, been violated by the government which he 
had formed. 

The remaining years of his life were spent in vainly struggling 
against that fatal policy which, at the moment when he might 
have given it a death blow, he had been induced to take under 
his protection. His exertions redeemed his own fame, but they 
effected little for his country. 

He found two parties arrayed against the government, the party 
of his own brothers-in-law, the Grenvilles, and the party of Lord 
Rockingham. On the question of the Middlesex election 2 these 
parties were agreed. But on many other important questions 
they differed widely : and they were, in truth, not less hostile to 

1 Junius : a famous series of letters signed Junius appeared in the London 
Public Advertiser between 1769 and 1772. The writer, supposed by Macaulay to be 
Sir Philip Francis, vehemently attacked the ministry, especially the Duke of Grafton, 
the Duke of Bedford, and Lord Mansfield. 

Junius did not stop here, but attacked the King quite as violently as he did the 
government. Burke said that when he read his arraignment of George III. it 
made his blood run cold. 

Junius boasted that the secret of his true name should die with him, and it still 
remains the " nominis umbra" in which he delighted. 

2 Middlesex election: In 1769 the notorious John Wilkes (see page 46) was 
expelled from Parliament for libel, and a new writ of election was issued for the 
county of Middlesex, which Wilkes represented. That county returned him to 
Parliament, but the House of Commons decided that his election was null and 
void. Wilkes was again returned by a large majority over the court candidate 
(Luttrell), but Parliament refused to admit the validity of his election. 

Finally Wilkes succeeded in taking his seat in a later Parliament, and through 



84 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

each other than to the court. The Grenvilles had, during several 
years, annoyed the Rockinghams with a succession of acrimonious 
pamphlets. It was long before the Rockinghams could be 
induced to retaliate. But an ill-natured tract, written under 
Grenville's direction, and entitled a State of the Nation, was too 
much for their patience. Burke undertook to defend and avenge 
his friends, and executed the task with admirable skill and vigor. 
On every point he was victorious, and nowhere more completely 
victorious than when he joined issue on those dry and minute 
questions of statistical and financial detail in which the main 
strength of Grenville lay. The official drudge, even on his own 
chosen ground, was utterly unable to maintain the fight against 
the great orator and philosopher. When Chatham reappeared, 
Grenville was still writhing with the recent shame and smart of 
this well-merited chastisement. Cordial co-operation between the 
two sections of the opposition was impossible. Nor could Chatham 
easily connect himself with either. His feelings, in spite of many 
affronts given and received, drew him towards the Grenvilles. 
For he had strong domestic affections ; and his nature, which, 
though haughty, was by no means obdurate, had been softened by 
affliction. But from his kinsmen he was separated by a wide 
difference of opinion on the question of colonial taxation. A 
reconciliation, however, took place. He visited Stowe : he shook 
hands with George Grenville ; and the Whig freeholders of Buck- 
inghamshire, at their public dinners, drank many bumpers to the 
union of the three brothers. 

In opinions, Chatham was much nearer to the Rockinghams 
than to his own relatives. But between him and the Rockinghams 
there was a gulf not easily to be passed. He had deeply injured 
them, and in injuring them, had deeply injured his country. 
When the balance was trembling between them and the court, he 
had thrown the whole weight of his genius, of his renown, of his 

his persistent efforts the House of Commons in 1782 recognized the right (so long 
denied in the Middlesex elections) " of every constituency to return the member of 
its choice." 

Chatham took a leading part in defending this claim urged by Wilkes, though 
he did not live to see its final triumph. 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 85 

popularity, into the scale of misgovernment. It must be added, 
that many eminent members of the party still retained a bitter 
recollection of the asperity and disdain with which they had been 
treated by him at the time when he assumed the direction of 
affairs. It is clear from Burke's pamphlets and speeches, and still 
more clear from his private letters, and from the language which 
he held in conversation, that he regarded Chatham with a feeling 
not far removed from dislike. Chatham was undoubtedly con- 
scious of his error, and desirous to atone for it. But his overtures 
of friendship, though made with earnestness, and even with 
unwonted humility, were at first received by Lord Rockingham 
with cold and austere reserve. Gradually the intercourse of the 
two statesmen became courteous and even amicable. But the past 
was never wholly forgotten. 

Chatham did not, however, stand alone. Round him gathered 
a party, small in number but strong in great and various talents. 
Lord Camden, Lord Shelburne, Colonel Barr£, and Dunning, 
afterwards Lord Ashburton, were the principal members of this 
connection. 

There is no reason to believe that, from this time till within a 
few weeks of Chatham's death, his intellect suffered any decay. 
His eloquence was almost to the last heard with delight. But it 
was not exactly the eloquence of the House of Lords. That lofty 
and passionate, but somewhat desultory declamation, in which he 
excelled all men, and which was set off by looks, tones, and ges- 
tures worthy of Garrick or Talma, was out of place in a small 
apartment where the audience often consisted of three or four 
drowsy Prelates, three or four old judges, accustomed during many 
years to disregard rhetoric, and to look only at facts and argu- 
ments, and three or four listless and supercilious men of fashion, 
whom anything like enthusiasm moved to a sneer. In the House 
of Commons, a flash of his eye, a wave of his arm, had sometimes 
cowed Murray. But, in the House of Peers, his utmost vehemence 
and pathos produced less effect than the moderation, the reason- 
ableness, the luminous order and the serene dignity, which charac- 
terized the speeches of Lord Mansfield. 



86 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

On the question of the Middlesex election, all the three divisions 
of the opposition acted in concert. No orator in either House 
defended what is now universally admitted to have been the con- 
stitutional cause with more ardor and eloquence than Chatham. 
Before this subject had ceased to occupy the public mind, George 
Grenville died. His party rapidly melted away ; and in a short 
time most of his adherents appeared on the ministerial benches. 

Had George Grenville lived many months longer, the friendly 
ties, which, after years of estrangement and hostility, had been 
renewed between him and his brother-in-law, would, in all proba- 
bility, have been a second time violently dissolved. For now the 
quarrel between England and the North American colonies took 
a gloomy and terrible aspect. Oppression provoked resistance ; 
resistance was made the pretext for fresh oppression. The 
warnings of all the greatest statesmen of the age were lost on an 
imperious court and a deluded nation. Soon a colonial senate 
confronted the British Parliament. Then the colonial militia 
crossed bayonets with the British regiments. At length the com- 
monwealth was torn asunder. Two millions of Englishmen, who, 
fifteen years before, had been as loyal to their prince and as proud 
of their country as the people of Kent or Yorkshire, separated 
themselves by a solemn act from the empire. For a" time it 
seemed that the insurgents would struggle to small purpose against 
the vast financial and military means of the mother country. But 
disasters, following one another in rapid succession, rapidly dis- 
pelled the illusions of national vanity. At length a great British 
force, exhausted, famished, harassed on every side by a hostile 
peasantry, was compelled to deliver up its arms. Those govern- 
ments which England had, in the late war, so signally humbled, 
and which had during many years been sullenly brooding over the 
recollections of Quebec, of Minden, and of the Moro, now saw 
with exultation that the day of revenge was at hand. France rec- 
ognized the independence of the United States ; and there could 
be little doubt that the example would soon be followed by Spain. 

Chatham and Rockingham had cordially concurred in opposing 
every part of the fatal policy which had brought the state into this 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 87 

dangerous situation. But their paths now diverged. Lord Rock- 
ingham thought, and, as the event proved, thought most justly, 
that the revolted colonies were separated from the empire for- 
ever, and that the only effect of prolonging the war on the Ameri- 
can continent would be to divide resources which it was desirable 
to concentrate. If the hopeless attempt to subjugate Pennsylvania 
and Virginia were abandoned, war against the House of Bourbon 
might possibly be avoided, or, if inevitable, might be carried on 
with success and glory. We might even indemnify ourselves for 
part of what we had lost, at the expense of those foreign enemies 
who had hoped to profit by our domestic dissensions. Lord Rock- 
ingham, therefore, and those who acted with him, conceived that 
the wisest course now open to England was to acknowledge the 
independence of the United States, and to turn her whole force 
against her European enemies. 

Chatham, it should seem, ought to have taken the same side. 
Before France had taken any part in our quarrel with the colonies, 
he had repeatedly, and with great energy of language, declared 
that it was impossible to conquer America, and he could not with- 
out absurdity maintain that it was easier to conquer France and 
America together than America alone. But his passions over- 
powered his judgment, and made him blind to his own inconsis- 
tency. The very circumstances which made the separation of the 
colonies inevitable made it to him altogether insupportable. The 
dismemberment of the empire seemed to him less ruinous and 
humiliating, when produced by domestic dissensions, than when 
produced by foreign interference. His blood boiled at the degra- 
dation of his country. Whatever lowered her among the nations 
of the earth, he felt as a personal outrage to himself. And the 
feeling was natural. He had made her so great. He had been 
so proud of her ; and she had been so proud of him. He remem- 
bered how, more than twenty years before, in a day of gloom and 
dismay, when her possessions were torn from her, when her flag 
was dishonored, she had called on him to save her. He remem- 
bered the sudden and glorious change which his energy had 
wrought, the long series of triumphs, the days of thanksgiving, the 



88 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

nights of illumination. Fired by such recollections, he determined 
to separate himself from those who advised that the independence 
of the colonies should be acknowledged. That he was in error 
will scarcely, we think, be disputed by his warmest admirers. 
Indeed, the treaty, by which, a few years later, the republic of the 
United States was recognized, was the work of his most attached 
adherents and of his favorite son. 

The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an address to the 
throne, against the further prosecution of hostilities with America. 
Chatham had, during some time, absented himself from Parlia- 
ment, in consequence of his growing infirmities. He determined 
to appear in his place on this occasion, and to declare that his 
opinions were decidedly at variance with those of the Rockingham 
party. He was in a state of great excitement. His medical 
attendants were uneasy, and strongly advised him to calm himself, 
and to remain at home. But he was not to be controlled. His 
son William, and his son-in-law, Lord Mahon, accompanied him 
to Westminster. He rested himself in the Chancellor's room till 
the debate commenced, and then, leaning on his two young 
relations, limped to his seat. The slightest particulars of that 
day were remembered, and have been carefully recorded. He 
bowed, it was remarked, with great courtliness to those Peers who 
rose to make way for him and his supporters. His crutch was in 
his hand. He wore, as was his fashion, a rich velvet coat. His 
legs were swathed in flannel. His wig was so large, and his face 
so emaciated, that none of his features could be discerned, except 
the high curve of his nose, and his eyes, which still retained a 
gleam of the old fire. 

When the Duke of Richmond had spoken, Chatham rose. For 
some time his voice was inaudible. At length his tones became 
distinct and his action animated. Here and there his hearers 
caught a thought or an expression which reminded them of Wil- 
liam Pitt. But it was clear that he was not himself. He lost the 
thread of his discourse, hesitated, repeated the same words several 
times, and was so confused that, in speaking of the Act of Settle- 
ment, he could not recall the name of the Electress Sophia, 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 89 

The House listened in solemn silence, and with the aspect of 
profound respect and compassion. This stillness was so deep 
that the dropping of a handkerchief would have been heard. 
The Duke of Richmond replied with great tenderness and cour- 
tesy ; but while he spoke, the old man was observed to be rest- 
less and irritable. The Duke sat down. Chatham stood up 
again, pressed his hand on his breast, and sank down in an apo- 
plectic fit. Three or four lords who sat near him caught him in 
his fall. The House broke up in confusion. The dying man 
was carried to the residence of one of the officers of Parliament, 
and was so far restored as to be able to bear a journey to Hayes. 
x\t Hayes, after lingering a few weeks, he expired in his seventieth 
year. His bed was watched to the last with anxious tenderness 
by his wife and children, and he well deserved their care. Too 
often haughty and wayward to others, to them he had been 
almost effeminately kind. He had through life been dreaded by 
his political opponents, and regarded with more awe than love 
even by his political associates. But no fear seems to have 
mingled with the affection which his fondness, constantly over- 
flowing in a thousand endearing forms, had inspired in the little 
circle at Hayes. 

Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses 
of Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the public men of 
the age had been estranged from him by his errors, and the other 
half by the exertions which he had made to repair his errors. 
His last speech had been an attack at once on the policy pur- 
sued by the government, and on the policy recommended by the 
opposition. But death restored him to his old place in the affec- 
tion of his country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of 
that which had been so great, and which had stood so long ? The 
circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage 
than to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, led 
forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken 
down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the 
drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered 



90 THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 

with peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who 
ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamors of a 
nation which remembered only the lofty genius, the unsullied 
probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For 
once, the chiefs of all parties were agreed. A public funeral, a 
public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the deceased 
were paid. A provision was made for his family. The city of 
London requested that the remains of the great man whom she 
had so long loved and honored might rest under the dome of her 
magnificent cathedral. But the petition came too late. Every 
thing was already prepared for the interment in Westminster 
Abbey. 

Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthu- 
mous honors to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave 
almost exclusively by opponents of the government. The banner 
of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barr£, attended 
by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, 
Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was con- 
spicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young 
William Pitt. After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, 
in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and 
broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, in the same con- 
secrated mould. 

Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the church, in a spot 
which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other 
end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests 
there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, arid 
Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many 
great citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those ven- 
erable graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from 
above, his effigy graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with 
eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, 
and to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared 
that memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when 
the rash and indiscriminate judgments which his contemporaries 



THE EARL OF CHATHAM. 91 

passed on his character may be calmly revised by history. And 
history, while, for the warning of vehement, high, and daring 
natures, she notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce, 
that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely 
one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid, name. 



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